Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Hermione.
The gallery
The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, c. 1800
Girodet's Cleveland drawing isolates the Spartan princess with her cousin Orestes — the marriage Tyndareus promised and Menelaus later complicated with Neoptolemus. Neoclassical line makes Hermione a figure of contested succession: Helen's daughter as the prize that binds Atreid and Aeacid claims after Troy. The sheet is among the rare images that name her without Racine's Andromache crowding the frame.
Andromaque et Pyrrhus
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, 1813
Guérin's Louvre canvas (INV 5183) stages Racine's Andromaque: Pyrrhus between Andromache and the jealous Hermione, Helen's daughter who will drive Orestes to murder. Painted for the Salon that made Guérin's name, it fixes Hermione as the tragic third of the Epirote triangle — the princess whose wounded pride ends a dynasty. The painting remains the defining modern image of her theatrical afterlife.
In music & on stage
In play
Andromaque
Jean Racine
Racine's tragedy makes Hermione the jealous axis of Pyrrhus, Andromache, and Orestes — the French stage's lasting portrait of Helen's daughter as passion and revenge.
Andromache
Euripides
Euripides' play sets Hermione against Andromache in Phthia — the childless Spartan wife who asks Menelaus to kill Hector's widow, the oldest theatrical dossier of her cruelty and fear.