Orpheus 1610 - 1642

Pierre Brebiette made this etching called “Orpheus” some time in the first half of the 17th century. It shows the mythical musician Orpheus, staff in hand, among a group of dancing maenads, female followers of the god of wine. The women are shown here in a state of ecstatic frenzy. Their dance will soon turn violent, as they tear Orpheus limb from limb, supposedly for his rejection of Dionysus, but also perhaps for his resistance to their sexual advances. Brebiette was a French artist, a contemporary of Poussin, and like him, he was keen to revive the motifs of classical antiquity, but also interested in the darker, more troubling aspects of ancient myth. We can see how these stories, handed down over centuries, come to be invested with the anxieties and conflicts of Brebiette’s own era. To understand this, we need to research not just the classical sources of the myths, but also the social and intellectual preoccupations of the artist’s own time.