Artemis Phosphoros was the goddess of salvation in difficult situations for the community. Helen And indeed, although myth could also suggest a real death of Iphigeneia, as did Pindar in his Pythian Ode 11 and Aeschylus in his Agamemnon , 14 in our play Iphigeneia regularly talks in language of appearing to have been killed, but actually was not. Iphigeneia herself has mentioned several times that she was killed with a sword 27, , Orestes also presupposes that he himself will be killed with a sword, , as do Iphigeneia and King Thoas And when Orestes discusses his sacrifice with Iphigeneia, she tells him that she will not kill him, but start the procedure by sprinkling him with water ; note also It is only natural, then, that she remembers with horror her own sprinkling in Aulis In fact, she gives Orestes the impression that she would kill him and only denies giving the fatal blow when properly asked In short, technically Iphigeneia may perhaps not have killed prisoners, she clearly came very close.
They immediately make clear that human sacrifice is still practised in Tauris, as Pylades informs Orestes that the top of the altar is bloodstained Stains of blood are prominently present on altars in a number of vase-paintings as the lasting proof of the otherwise perishable gifts to the gods. Platnauer, Kovacs, Cropp and Kyriakou all suppose that he is referring to the copings of the altar, but the Greek word thrinkos , which is curiously popular in Euripides in the period , 27 is always used of walls of houses and palaces, 28 never of altars.
There can be no doubt that the impression is given of an imposing and wonderful temple, which makes the purpose for which it is used the more appalling. The language is somewhat vague, but the reference must have been clear to the audience through the scenery. Revenge, in his thoughts, is total. Moreover, once again we hear of strangers as the victims of the human sacrifice.
In other words, the implicit suggestion clearly is that the Taurians do not sacrifice their own folk but only Greeks 39, 72, , , In the following dialogue Iphigeneia tries to find out the name of Orestes, but he avoids straight answers to her questions. However, Iphigeneia is not quite explicit here, and we may perhaps think that Euripides did not find it necessary to imagine this part of the sacrifice in minute detail.
One would have expected something about beheading, but that is not even touched upon, and neither is the altar mentioned. Pylades apparently expects the same fate. The Greek term usually refers to a complete removal from the human sphere, 32 as indeed will be the effect of his cremation and the disposal of his body. It is clear that Euripides could not imagine Orestes being eaten after his being sacrificed.
As Iphigeneia carries it in her arms , it is more likely to have been represented in wood than in stone. In the play it is usually called agalma 14 times or bretas 12 times. She proposes that she will tell King Thoas that it is not lawful to sacrifice of course thyein Orestes to the goddess, as he is unclean as a matricide He and Pylades need to be purified with seawater , as is the case with the statue, which had been touched by Orestes To be a porter usually was the function of old women, 37 and the question shows his disdain of Iphigeneia, even though she is the priestess.
She spits and tells the king that the statue of the goddess had turned away from where it stood , and even closed its eyes We seem to have here a combination of the custom to veil a polluted person to isolate him and the idea that polluted persons should not even be in this world. Iphigeneia will purify the temple with a torch , , which was a powerful means of purification, 41 but, in the typical Greek way, the bloodshed could be purified only with other blood, in this case that of newborn lambs The mention of lambs is rather striking, as normally pigs are used, 45 even though we have only representations of mythological sacrifices in this manner.
As the Persian magi whispered their chants in a very low voice, 47 this custom may well be alluded to here in order to conjure up a strange ritual. There is something strange about her appearance, as we would have expected Artemis to make some sort of intervention.
But the whole business of human sacrifice is dropped, and Athena rather abruptly now explains the purpose of the theft of the statue. The connection with Tauris strongly suggests that the local image also looked like an archaic or exotic image of Artemis, just like the other images that were connected with the myth of Orestes.
This was typical for temples of Artemis, and archaeology thus confirms the threatening nature of her images. After this aetiology Athena concludes with the institution of the cult of Iphigeneia in Brauron.
As this cult is clearly connected with the rites of maturation of girls, both cults, which were only 6 kilometres away from one another, were already associated in antiquity and probably related in their attention to the growing up of boys and girls.
Let us conclude with looking now once again at the problem of human sacrifice in the play. It is clear that the myth of Orestes and Iphigeneia in Tauris is relatively young and presupposes Greek colonisation. After the initial ritual katarxamenoi : see above they clubbed the heads of their prisoners and pushed their bodies over the edge of the cliff on which their temple stood, although others said that they were buried.
The heads were fixed on stakes. The Taurians, thus still Herodotus, identified their Parthenos with Iphigeneia. Strabo VII, 4, 2 adds that the temple contains a xoanon. The historical reality behind this report is of course hard to establish, but the Parthenos was worshipped there in later times, and the practice of headhunting is well established for the Scythians. The pushing over the cliff is mentioned as a threat by Thoas , and the heads on stakes return in the play as trophies on the temple above.
Iphigeneia is not the goddess but still the priestess of the goddess Artemis, whose statue is also called a xoanon in the play Even the mention of the initial ceremonies is used by Euripides, who often refers to them as we have seen.
However, he evidently did not want to represent the disposal of Orestes in an all too dishonouring manner and therefore mentioned cremation as the mode of funeral. That makes his contribution the more interesting. The epithet Tauropolos of Artemis must have made it easy to connect her cult in Halai with that in Tauris. Thus we hardly find anything really strange or barbaric in Artemis in Tauris. It is only the custom of beheading, which does not belong to her Greek cult.
Was it seen positive or negative? Although not described in so many respects as in IA , it seems clear that Iphigeneia is represented as being slaughtered like an animal.
But otherwise there is not even a hint that this is a strange or uncommon sacrifice. It is different with Orestes. Although the initial ceremonies resemble those of animal sacrifice, the last part of the sacrifice is rather different. We do not hear of many details, but the killing by people who are not clearly described, the burning in the temple and the hanging up of the skull on the cornices of the temple hardly fit a normal Greek sacrifice and suggest a barbaric ritual.
Yet Thoas is an interesting mix of an oriental despot with cruel penalties and a pious Greek who obediently listens to the goddess Athena.
Euripides clearly refrains from creating all too simplistic characters and rituals in this play. Sources differ on why exactly Artemis was so angry with Agamemnon. Some say he boasted that he could hunt better than the goddess, while others say that he had not done anything; she just was angry at him. Agamemnon told this lie because he suspected that if he told his wife the real reason why he wanted Iphigenia to come to Aulis, that Clytemnestra would not go along with the plan. But Clytemnestra suspected nothing; she prepared her daughter for marriage and sent her off to Aulis.
His intent, almost certainly, was to mock the self-righteous behavior of seventeenth-century theologians, much as the playwright Samuel Coster had done earlier in the century. I am most grateful to Arthur Wheelock and Henriette Rahusen for thoughtful comments on the first draft of this entry. The support, a single piece of plain-weave canvas, has been wax-lined onto a similar secondary canvas and stretched onto a 7-member stretcher.
X-radiography reveals cusping at all four edges, indicating that the original painted dimensions have not been altered. A light gray ground has been applied, followed by a thin transparent brown underlayer, used to tone the gray. The paint has been applied in thin, opaque layers with a limited use of glazing and economic use of ground and underpainting.
Infrared examination reveals two sketching campaigns beneath the final painted surface. First, a dry medium was used to describe the general location of folds in the textile in the foreground. Second, there is a dark-colored fluid oil sketch of the entire composition in broad cursory strokes. The painting was restored in while at the Rijksmuseum and examined by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in It is in a good overall state of preservation.
Click here for a closer view of this artwork with Visual Spectrum photography. In the introduction to his play he stated that the poets of antiquity did not just leave the play to posterity as an invention, but that they meant it as: a painting on the wall, in which observant people can measure the course of the World, and can determine how Hypocrisy, under the cloak of Religion, displays his character.
For further discussion about this artwork, see Jan Steen's Histories. Willem Jacobsz. Van Heemskerk —92 , Leiden, until ; by descent to Willem Willemsz. Van Heemskerck —95 , Leiden, until ; by descent to Johanna van Sorgen — , Leiden, until ; by descent to Leonard van Heemskerk — , Leiden, until his sale, Leiden, Delfos, 2 September , no.
Lady Cremorne, Rawdon Collection, Bakker for Vullinx, The Hague, for guilders]. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, —, inv. From whom acquired by the present owner. London, The British Gallery, London, Barbizon House, , no. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, exhibited with the permanent collection, — Athene, Nationale Pinakotheek. Greenwich, Conn. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, on loan with the permanent collection, July —April [lent by the present owner].
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, on loan with the permanent collection, January —present. Reynolds, Sir Joshua. Edited by Robert R. Wark, San Marino, Smith, John. London, —42, 9: , no. Waagen , Gustav Friedrich. Treasures of art in Great Britain: being an account of the chief collections of paintings, drawings, sculptures, illuminated mss.
London — Van Westrheene, Tobias. The Hague, , , no. Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Edited and translated by Edward G. Hawke, 1: 27, no. London, — Esslingen and Paris, — Hirschmann, Otto. Preyer im Haag. Bredius, Abraham. Jan Steen. Met honderd platen bevattende afbeeldingen in photogravure van zijne beste werken. Amsterdam, , Amsterdam, Van Gils, Johan Baptist Franciscus. Op de Hoogte. De Rooij, B. Amsterdam , p. Heppner, Albert. De Jonge, Caroline Henriette.
Amsterdam, , 55— Gudlaugsson, Sturla J.
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