Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Aristomachus.
The gallery
Portrait of Sophie Friederike Seyler as Mérope
Anton Graff, 1775
Anton Graff portrays the celebrated 18th-century actress Sophie Friederike Seyler in the title role of Mérope, the tragic queen of Messenia. In myth she is the wife of Cresphontes, the son of Aristomachus who won Messenia at the Heraclid Return; after Cresphontes and his elder sons are murdered, Merope safeguards their one surviving child, the avenger Aepytus. The role became a touchstone of the European stage through Maffei's and Voltaire's tragedies, and Graff captures the actress in costume with the grave, mourning dignity that defines the character. Held in the Hamburger Kunsthalle.
Mérope, Act IV, Scene 2 (from the Œuvres complètes de Voltaire)
Jean-Michel Moreau (designer), engraved by Antoine-Jean Duclos, 1783
This copper engraving illustrates the climactic fourth act of Voltaire's Mérope, the Enlightenment retelling of the Messenian revenge saga that descends from Aristomachus. Queen Merope, believing the young stranger before her to be the murderer of her last son, is on the verge of striking him down before recognizing him as Aepytus himself, the rightful heir come to avenge his father Cresphontes. Moreau le Jeune's design, engraved by Duclos for an illustrated edition of Voltaire's collected works, freezes the moment of unbearable dramatic suspense in the polished neoclassical line of late-18th-century French book illustration.
Jean-Baptiste Brizard as Narbas in Voltaire's Mérope at the Comédie-Française
Louis Carrogis Carmontelle, 1765
Carmontelle's drawing in black crayon, sanguine and watercolour records the actor Jean-Baptiste Brizard performing Narbas in Voltaire's Mérope at the Comédie-Française in 1765, captured at the Act III line 'O mon maître! O cendres que j'adore!' Narbas is the faithful old retainer who spirited the infant Aepytus to safety after the massacre of Cresphontes and his sons, raising Aristomachus's grandson far from Messenia until he could return to take his vengeance. The portrait belongs to Carmontelle's famous gallery of theatrical and society figures and documents how the Messenian revenge myth lived on as a star vehicle of the French stage.
Mérope (illustration from the Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. III)
Jean-Michel Moreau (designer), engraved by Antoine-Jean Duclos, 1784
A second Moreau-Duclos plate prepared for the illustrated Kehl edition of Voltaire's complete works, again staging a scene from Mérope, the tragedy of the Messenian house founded by Cresphontes, son of Aristomachus. The composition gives full neoclassical theatricality to the moment of recognition and revenge between the widowed queen and her long-lost son Aepytus, the avenger who will at last restore the Heraclid line of Messenia. Such plates carried the ancient Messenian succession — Aristomachus to Cresphontes to Aepytus — into the visual culture of Enlightenment Europe.