Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Hippolytus.
The gallery
Hippolytus, Phaedra and the Nurse
Unknown (Roman wall painter), 1st century AD
This Roman fresco from Herculaneum, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 and now in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, dramatizes the pivotal moment of the Hippolytus tragedy. The seated, lovesick Phaedra is attended by her aged nurse, who acts as go-between to the chaste young Hippolytus standing apart. The composition derives from a Greek pictorial tradition known across the Roman world, illustrating how Euripides' play of Phaedra's forbidden passion for her stepson became a favorite subject for domestic wall decoration in Campania.
Hippolytus after the Confession of Phaedra, his Stepmother
Étienne-Barthélémy Garnier, 1793
Exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1793 and now in the Musée Ingres-Bourdelle in Montauban, this Neoclassical oil on canvas seizes the instant after Phaedra has confessed her incestuous love. The devout, recoiling Hippolytus, sworn follower of Artemis and scornful of Aphrodite, turns away in horror from his stepmother, whose desperate gesture sets the tragedy in motion. Garnier stages the encounter with the restrained gestures and sculptural clarity prized by late-eighteenth-century French history painting, drawing directly on Euripides and Racine's 'Phèdre'.
The Death of Hippolytus (La mort d'Hippolyte)
Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Elder, 1715
This marble group, presented as Lemoyne's reception piece for the French Royal Academy and today in the Louvre (MR 2026), captures the violent end of Hippolytus. Falsely accused by Phaedra and cursed by his father Theseus, the youth is thrown from his chariot when a bull sent by Poseidon from the sea terrifies his horses; he is dragged to his death entangled in the reins. Lemoyne renders the twisting, agonized body and rearing horses with Baroque dynamism, fixing in stone the catastrophe that Euripides made the climax of his drama.
The Death of Hippolytus
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1860
An early work by the Anglo-Dutch painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, this canvas depicts the fatal moment on the shore when the sea-bull conjured by Poseidon panics Hippolytus' team. Faithful to the myth in which Theseus' curse and Phaedra's false accusation doom the innocent youth, Alma-Tadema combines archaeological detail with theatrical drama, the rearing horses and the monstrous bull surging from the waves as Hippolytus is hurled to his death. The painting reflects the nineteenth-century revival of interest in Euripidean tragedy among academic history painters.