Changing Paintings: 61 Sacrifice of Polyxena

Ovid has raced through the destruction of Troy and its nobility, including the death of Priam, the herding together of the Trojan women to be taken as trophies, and the vicious murder of Astyanax.

As the Greek ships prepare to depart, Priam’s widow Hecuba is the last to board. Her youngest son Polydorus has been secretly in the care of King Polymestor in Thrace, who was paid a great sum to protect him. With Troy destroyed and that source of income lost, Polymestor slit the child’s throat and threw his body into the sea.

The Greek fleet shelters off the coast of Thrace, again waiting for favourable winds. While there, the ghost of Achilles appears and demands the sacrifice of Hecuba’s daughter Polyxena in appeasement.

As with Iphigenia’s sacrifice a decade earlier, it’s now the turn of Hecuba’s daughter to be sacrificed to secure good weather. Polyxena is taken from the arms of her mother and put before the altar where Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, stands ready with his knife. Polyxena pleads eloquently for her body to be given to her mother without a ransom, a speech bringing even the priest to tears. Nevertheless, he thrusts the knife into her breast, and she falls to her knees, still resolute, but dead. The Trojan women mourn her and care for her body, so her mother can embrace her in final farewell. Hecuba then responds in a long speech of lament.

Merry-Joseph Blondel (1781-1853), Hecuba and Polyxena (after 1814), oil on canvas, 204.6 x 146.2 cm, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. Wikimedia Commons.

Merry-Joseph Blondel’s fine painting of Hecuba and Polyxena, from after 1814, is superb in its treatment of fabrics, but more puzzling in its narrative. Hecuba, the older woman, appears to have fainted, presumably at the announcement of Polyxena’s imminent sacrifice, with her daughter kneeling at her feet.

Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), The Sacrifice of Polyxena (1647), oil on canvas, 177.8 x 131.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Several paintings show the sacrifice of Polyxena, of which Charles Le Brun’s from 1647 is arguably the finest, and in superb condition. Polyxena is being led to the altar as Hecuba tries to hold her back. Behind Polyxena is the same Neoptolemus who threw Astyanax to his death, threatening to kill her where she is.

Giovanni Francesco Romanelli (1610–1662), The Sacrifice of Polyxena (date not known), oil on canvas, 197.5 x 223.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Giovanni Francesco Romanelli’s The Sacrifice of Polyxena, from about the same time, shows the moment the priest is about to sink his knife into the woman’s breast. A young assistant, their head averted, kneels ready with a large bowl to catch the sacrificial blood.

Hecuba then walks down to the beach for a jar of seawater, and stumbles across the body of her son Polydorus. She is initially struck dumb, and freezes like a rock with the shock. As that subsides, her wrath grows. She makes her way to meet with Polymestor, on the pretext of wanting to show him some hidden gold. He immediately starts lying to her, so she flies at him, burying her fingers deep into his eyes to blind him. She is then stoned by Thracians, and is transformed into a dog, and that place is named Cynossema, the dog’s tomb.

Artist not known, The Vengeance of Hecuba (1600s), Macao tapestry, silk embroidery, gold thread, and painted satin, 369.5 x 489 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, France. Wikimedia Commons.

The Vengeance of Hecuba is a magnificent Macao tapestry from the seventeenth century, showing Hecuba and three other women sealing Polymestor’s fate for his murder of Polydorus. Hecuba is poking his eyes out, as the others swing long wooden clubs at him.

Giuseppe Crespi (1665–1747), Hecuba kills Polymestor (date not known), oil, 173 x 184 cm, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België / Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium. Wikimedia Commons.

Giuseppe Crespi probably painted his version of Hecuba kills Polymestor in the early eighteenth century. His skilful composition makes it a chilling but carefully implicit image, as a woman associate holds the king down, and Hecuba reaches up to remove his eyes. Crespi has minimised the amount of limb visible in the upper part of the painting, to keep the composition there clean and clear. He seems to have compensated for that in the legs of the lower half, made even more complex by deep shadow.

The goddess Aurora joins in the lament over the destruction of Troy. She had not only supported the Trojan cause, but her son Memnon had been killed by Achilles in combat. She is stricken with grief, and can’t bear to watch his cremation on the funeral pyre. She kneels before Jupiter and begs him that her dead son might be granted an honour. Jupiter agrees, and the smoke from Memnon’s pyre darkens the whole sky, as might have happened during a major volcanic eruption. That smoke is then transformed into a flock of birds, the Memnonides, in honour of Memnon.

Bernard Picart (1673–1733), Memnon, son of Eos and Tithonus (date not known), engraving, further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Bernard Picart’s engraving from the early eighteenth century of Memnon, son of Eos and Tithonus shows a young warrior in Egypt, looking into Aurora’s dawn light. He may be sat on his own sarcophagus too.

The two colossi at Al Bairat near Luxor in Egypt were known in classical times, and became popular motifs for ‘orientalist’ artists in the nineteenth century, several of whom show them in dramatic lighting.

Gustav W. Seitz (1826-?), Egypt: the Statues of Memnon (date not known), colour lithograph of original watercolour, 26.2 x 37.7 cm, The Wellcome Library (no. 40355i), London. Image courtesy of and © The Wellcome Trust, via Wikimedia Commons.

Gustav W. Seitz’s Egypt: the Statues of Memnon, seen here as a colour lithograph of his original watercolour, is highly atmospheric, and an excellent demonstration of the moon illusion.

Charles Vacher (1818-1883), The Statues of the Memnons (1864), watercolour on paper, 43.2 x 99 cm, The Wellcome Library (no. 45057i), London. Image courtesy of and © The Wellcome Trust, via Wikimedia Commons.

The colours in Charles Vacher’s watercolour of The Statues of the Memnons (1864) are superb.

Albert Zimmermann (1808–1880), The Memnon Statues (date not known), oil on wood, 25.5 x 52.5 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Finally, Albert Zimmermann’s oil painting of The Memnon Statues captures the heat haze, and a snake moving through the water.