Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Antigone.
The gallery
Antigone
Frederic Leighton, 1882
Leighton's solitary Antigone stands in classical drapery — the Theban sister as a Victorian icon of conscience, poised between burial and death. The canvas isolates Sophocles' heroine without Creon or corpse, pure resolve made flesh.
Oedipus and Antigone
Antoni Brodowski, 1828
Polish neoclassical canvas in the National Museum in Warsaw: the blind Oedipus leans on Antigone as she leads him into exile. Brodowski makes the sister the staff of Colonus — piety before the burial that will destroy her.
Antigone at the Bedside of Polynices
Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, 1868
Benjamin-Constant's Antigone keeps vigil over Polynices' corpse — the sister who will sprinkle dust against Creon's decree. The painting stages the quiet moment before defiance becomes tragedy.
Ismene and Antigone Plead with Theseus
Nicolai Abildgaard, 1794
Abildgaard's canvas in the Statens Museum for Kunst shows Antigone and Ismene before Theseus, begging for their father's protection at Colonus. Danish neoclassicism turns Sophocles' last play into a scene of sisterly embassy.
Antigone Giving Burial to Polynices
Sébastien Norblin, 1825
Norblin's 1825 Prix de Rome painting (École des Beaux-Arts, Paris) shows Antigone burying Polynices against the city's ban. The handful of dust becomes the act that defines her — piety chosen over survival.
On screen
In music & on stage
In play
Antigone
Sophocles
Sophocles' sister who buries Polynices against Creon's decree — still the West's central drama of conscience versus the city's law.
Antigone
Jean Anouilh
Anouilh's Occupation-era rewrite makes Antigone a quiet refusal under tyranny — the Theban sister as a wartime allegory that never names its Vichy Creon.