fetishofsilence: Gustave Moreau Les Prétendants (The Pretenders) 1852 Oil on canva
fetishofsilence:Gustave Moreau Les Prétendants (The Pretenders)1852 Oil on canvas 3.85 x 3.43 m Cat. 19Inspired by the famous episode of Homer’s The Odyssey {Book XXII) in which, on his return to Ithaca, Odysseus slaughters the suitors installed in his palace. This canvas, reworked several times, is the largest that Moreau ever executed.In the hall of the palace, Athena, appearing in a dazzling halo, dominates the scene of vengeance of Odysseus, the massacre of the princes who wooed Penelope in his absence.The hero appears in arms at the back of the room, right in the doorway. Moreau noted: “And the lyre and singing seemed to resonate even in the midst of this storm of cries of rage and pain. And the shrill sound of the chord of the arc also sounded a rhythmic way, when the Minerva swallow had drawn the aegis bloody ceiling.”As in there working, Moreau characters people new to the canvas by adding “any material that scene for slaughter” figures “apparently taking no part in the drama” to remind the viewer of plastic beauty.The concept of “epic carnage”, the author evolved into a tribute to the beauty that underlines the plastic male tangle of bodies in the foreground.[Translated from French caption provided by Museé Moreau] [Birkett, Sins of the Fathers, Figure 1] -- source link
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