Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Jocasta.
The gallery
Oedipus Separating from Jocasta
Alexandre Cabanel, 1843
Cabanel's early academic canvas freezes the palace catastrophe: Oedipus turns from Jocasta as recognition unmakes their marriage. The queen who was mother and wife stands at the hinge of Sophocles' plot — the moment before the noose.
Farewell of Oedipus to the Corpses of His Wife and Sons
Édouard Toudouze, 1871
Toudouze's Prix de Rome painting (École des Beaux-Arts, Paris) lays Jocasta among the dead of the house of Cadmus. Blind Oedipus takes leave of the queen who hanged herself when the bed's riddle was spoken — Theban ruin staged as a funeral farewell.
Oedipus and Jocasta
Émile Bernard, 1930
Bernard's late modernist pair keeps mother and son in the same charged space — Jocasta as consort before the recognition, the double bond made visible without the Sphinx or the noose. A twentieth-century return to the Theban queen at the heart of the tragedy.
Eteocles and Polynices Admonished to Peace by Their Mother Jocasta
After Gerard de Lairesse, c. 1670–1729
Rijksmuseum print (CC0): Jocasta stands between her warring sons, pleading for peace before the Seven march on Thebes. The queen as mediator — the mother who cannot stop the brothers' mutual slaughter that will leave Creon the throne.
Jocasta and Oedipus
Anonymous (after Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris), c. 1474
Hand-colored German woodcut from Steinhöwel's Boccaccio: Jocasta and her son Oedipus as a famous woman of antiquity. Early print culture already fixed the Theban queen beside the son who was also her husband.
On screen
Edipo re
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pasolini's Jocasta is mother and wife in the same frame — the queen who hangs herself when the riddle of the bed is finally spoken aloud.
Oedipus the King
Philip Saville
Saville's adaptation keeps Jocasta in the palace recognition — the mother who sees the truth a breath before her son does.