Changing Paintings: 53 The death of Orpheus

Ovid ended Book Ten of his Metamorphoses with the death of Adonis, lover of Venus, when he was gored in the groin by a wild boar. He starts Book Eleven with another tragic death, this time of the great bard Orpheus.

Ovid first reminds the reader that almost all the stories told in the previous book had been sung by Orpheus after his loss of Eurydice to the Underworld. His song is now interrupted as he’s attacked by a mob of frenzied Thracian women, Maenads or Bacchantes, accusing Orpheus of scorning them, as he had.

The first of the Bacchantes throws her thyrsus at him, but only bruises his face. She then falls to the ground, enchanted by his voice and lyre. Soon, though, his music is overwhelmed by the mob with their drums and deafening screams. The women first kill the birds that Orpheus had charmed, then the snakes around him, and next they turn on him. A nearby group of farmworkers run away, abandoning their tools in the field. The Bacchantes seize those to use as weapons to bludgeon the bard’s body. He makes one last plea for his life before they tear him limb from limb.

Émile Lévy (1826–1890), Death of Orpheus (1866), oil on canvas, 189 x 118 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Émile Lévy’s Death of Orpheus (1866) shows the moment before the first wound is inflicted: Orpheus, remarkably young-looking, has just been knocked to the ground, and looks stunned. Two Bacchantes kneel by his side, one clasping his neck, the other about to bring the vicious blade of her ceremonial sickle down to cleave his neck open. Another wields her thyrsus like a club while pulling at the man’s left hand. Their priestess, her head thrown back to emphasise her extraordinary mane of hair, is entwined with serpents, and officiates at the sacrifice. In the shadows at the top left, the figure of Dionysus (Bacchus) stands, looking away from the scene below as a naked celebrant cavorts behind him.

Louis Bouquet (1885–1952), The Death of Orpheus (1925-39), oil on canvas, 98 × 131 cm, Private collection. Image by Jcstuccilli, via Wikimedia Commons.

Louis Bouquet’s more recent The Death of Orpheus (1925-39) transports the scene to a beach, where the naked Bacchantes are almost unarmed and just starting to tear the body of Orpheus with their bare hands and teeth.

The mortal remains of Orpheus are then dispersed into the rivers: his head and lyre end up in the Hebrus, where they still make sad sounds, as they make their way downstream and over the sea to the shores of Lesbos. Orpheus’ soul descends to the Underworld, where he is at last reunited with his beloved Eurydice. But the god Bacchus cannot let this crime pass, and transforms those Bacchantes into an oak wood.

A second painting shown with Lévy’s in the 1866 Salon skips ahead in the story, to the discovery of the remains of Orpheus, not washed up on the shore of Lesbos but retained in the waters of the Hebrus.

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), Orpheus (1865), oil on panel, 154 × 99.5 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

In Gustave Moreau’s Orpheus (1865), a sombrely dressed Thracian woman holds Orpheus’ lyre, on which rests his head, blanched in death, as if affixed to the lyre like the head of a hunting trophy. Her eyes are closed in reverie. The river Hebrus is shown in the background landscape to the right. The gentle and natural beauty of the Thracian woman, her ornate clothes, flowers, and the strange beauty of Orpheus’ head on the lyre contrast with this harsh and barren landscape.

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), Orpheus (detail) (1865), oil on panel, 154 × 99.5 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Moreau has here avoided elaborate symbols and decoration, apart from two passages at the painting’s corners: three figures, apparently shepherds, on the rocks at the upper left, and a pair of tortoises at the lower right. The figures refer to music, in keeping with Orpheus and his lyre, but the significance of the tortoises has been harder to explain, and may be a personal reference to Moreau’s love for his partner.

John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus (1900), oil on canvas, 99 × 149 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

John William Waterhouse uses his depiction of this scene, in Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus (1900), to celebrate honesty in art, a theme dear to the artist throughout his career. This shows two young women discovering the severed head and lyre of Orpheus. Waterhouse may well have seen Moreau’s painting, which had become popular with Symbolists of mainland Europe. A decade later, Waterhouse re-used his setting for another of his more aesthetic paintings, The Charmer (1911).