Cleveland Museum of Art

The Oath of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes

Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson

Date

c. 1800

Medium

Black chalks and white chalk with stumping and erasing on light brown wove paper

Culture

France, late 18th, early 19th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Girodet found inspiration for this drawing in Aeschylus’s Greek tragedy Seven against Thebes. Dramatized with powerful physicality, seven warrior leaders from Argos raise weapons to the war deities Ares and Enyo at the far left as they immerse their hands in the blood of a sacrificed bull, and swear an oath to defeat Thebes. Girodet’s strong black outlines and idealized male nudes are characteristic of Neoclassicism’s calculated restraint. Yet the flash of lightning and the warrior’s impassioned expressions intensify the emotional and psychological content of the scene, anticipating the growth of romanticism in European art during the early 1800s.

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