Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen The Erinyes.
The gallery
Orestes Pursued by the Furies (The Remorse of Orestes)
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1862
Painted by the French academic master William-Adolphe Bouguereau, this canvas dramatizes the climax of Aeschylus's Oresteia: having avenged his murdered father Agamemnon by killing his mother Clytemnestra, Orestes is tormented by the Erinyes — the snake-wreathed goddesses of blood-vengeance. Bouguereau shows the young matricide writhing in anguish, hands clapped over his ears, as three furious avengers crowd in upon him, one brandishing the bleeding corpse of Clytemnestra to enforce his guilt while serpents twine through their hair. The composition captures the very essence of the Erinyes as the personified pangs of conscience that pursue a kin-slayer relentlessly until purification or divine acquittal. The work is now held by the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia.
Orestes at Delphi (Paestan red-figure bell-krater)
Unknown (Paestan vase-painter, attributed to the Python group), c. 330 BCE
This South Italian (Paestan) red-figure bell-krater, now in the British Museum, preserves one of the canonical ancient depictions of the Erinyes in the Orestes legend. The fugitive Orestes has taken refuge at the sacred omphalos of Delphi, flanked by Apollo, Athena, and his companion Pylades; around the scene sleep and stir the Erinyes — the avenging spirits roused by the blood of his slain mother Clytemnestra — alongside priestesses of the oracle. The vase shows how the Greeks visualized the Furies as winged female pursuers of the matricide, the same chthonic powers that Aeschylus dramatized on the Athenian stage and that would ultimately be transformed into the benevolent Eumenides ('Kindly Ones').
Orestes Pursued by the Furies
John Singer Sargent, 1921
Created by the American painter John Singer Sargent for his mural cycle at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this large oil shows the matricide Orestes fleeing in terror across the canvas, his nude body straining forward while a swarm of Erinyes — the Furies — bears down on him with raised arms and writhing serpents. Sargent renders the avenging goddesses as a frenzied, swirling mass of female figures, dramatizing the unrelenting torment that the spirits of blood-guilt inflict on the man who has shed his mother's blood. The painting belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and remains one of the most striking modern visualizations of the Erinyes as embodiments of pursuing remorse.