Hello I just looked up the Frederic Leighton Orpheus and Eurydice because you mentioned it and 1) I'm having feelings and 2) I would very happily read any and all thoughts you have on it
ahh I love it so much itâs one of my favorite paintings of all time! I wrote my first ever real paper on it (specifically on its engagement with Ovid) and to this day I donât know how I did on that paper, but writing it was transformative for my understanding of the myth. This past summer I finally got to see the painting in person at the Leighton House and discovered thereâs a Robert Browning poem affixed to the frame that definitely would have been helpful to know about while writing about it. It somewhat supports my points anyway though, so thatâs okay.
long post: Ovid, Leighton, and my 2016 and 2020 takes on the two of them
First of all: his eyes. Obscured and shadowed and leaving it ambiguous whether or not his gaze has fallen on Eurydice yet. Is this the moment before he gives in and looks at her? Is it the split second after he sees her and before she disappears? YES. (I did finally get to confirm that the eyes are just as shadowy and ambiguous in person as in all the pictures on the internet.)
Secondly, something a lot of paintings of Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the underworld do, but which is particularly brought to the forefront here: Orpheus is touching Eurydice. He should clearly know that sheâs there, since he can feel her, so why would he doubt her presence and need to see her to confirm that sheâs there? Many other painters show him leading her by the hand (Corot, Feuerbach, Rubens, Poynter, Cervelli, Vignali, Raoux), creating a paradox where youâre just not supposed to think too hard about what it means for the story that theyâre holding hands. But whatâs going on here is much more than that. She seems to be actively urging him to turn around (a point in which I was vindicated by the Browning poem, which ends âlook at me!â). Leightonâs drawing attention to their physical contact and the impossibility of Orpheus NOT knowing that sheâs there. He must know, sheâs clinging to him so tightly, and look at his hand, he acknowledges her presence by pushing her away, actively trying to avoid looking at her.
So from there I go back to Ovid (metamorphoses 10.44-52)
⌠Nec regia coniunx
sustinet oranti nec qui regit ima negare,
Eurydicenque vocant. Umbras erat illa recentes
inter et incessit passu de vulnere tardo.
Hanc simul et legem Rhodopeius accipit Orpheus,
ne flectat retro sua lumina, donec Avernas
exierit valles: aut inrita dona futura.
Neither the royal consort
nor he who reigns below can bear to deny the beggar what he asks.
They call for Eurydice. She was among the recently deceased,
and she walked with a stride slowed by her wound.
Rhodopeian (Thracian) Orpheus received her and a rule at the same time OR At the same time, Rhodopeian (Thracian) Orpheus also received this rule:
that he not turn his eyes behind him until he had left
the valleys of Avernus, or else the gift would be in vain
The pains Ovid takes here to note that Orpheus gets Eurydice and the rule âsimul,â at the same timeâ specifically, that he does not get Eurydice before the condition is named. Eurydice is not present when they specify that he is not allowed to turn around. She doesnât know that heâs not allowed to look at her. Thatâs what I think Leightonâs working with.
Eurydice is begging Orpheus to look at her and he wonât and she has no idea why. Sheâs confused, sheâs distraught, the man she loves, the man who just descended to the underworld for her, refuses to look at her. Sheâs desperately begging him to look at her and acknowledge her and speak to her and confirm he loves her, her as a person, not just the idea of being the man who could sing someone back from the dead.
He doesnât turn because he doubts sheâs there. He knows. He can feel her arms around him and hear her pleas. He turns because he cannot bear her thinking that he doesnât love her. He needs her to know that he loves her, even if it means losing her. His resolve to not look at her is defeated by the strength of his love, not his doubt. He turns knowing she is there and knowing he will lose her, because he cannot face the alternative, that she thinks he does not love her and that he raised her from the dead out of pride, not love.
Now, why on earth he canât just use his voice and tell her heâs not allowed to look at her, I have no idea. That youtube comment asking why the two of them donât just marco-polo their way out? Yeah, that. Oh also throughout the paper I referred to Ovidâs version of the character as âEurydiceâ and Leightonâs version as âEuridiceâ with the Italian spelling because for some reason the internet often gives the paintingâs title in Italian, but actually that was a really helpful way of dealing with two portrayals of the same figure.
In the last few years Iâve moved toward a much less romantic perspective on the myth. I talked somewhat recently about my take on Eurydice, and last year I got something close to it. I think these poems and this art capture a lot of my thoughts right now. But still, like Leighton, I adore the idea of her asking him, even begging him, to turn around. Like in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, when Heloise says âperhaps she was the one who said, âturn around.ââ But in Portrait of a Lady on Fire I think the implications are that Eurydice would be urging him to make the artistâs choice rather than the loverâs choice, telling him that art is more important than love, that the memory of love is enough (which is, incidentally, I think exactly what the Browning poem is saying).Â
I think Iâve been wanting to examine whether it is love to begin with. Reinterrogating what it means to say that the memory of love is whatâs important-- that the idea of the woman is more than the woman herself. Maybe Eurydice doesnât mind being dead. After all, it is the first thing she has done for herself, all her life things have been done to her. Itâs the first time she has existed as her own person. Maybe she would like to stay dead, stay in a world without Orpheus. Maybe she knows that his relationship to her is one of art, not love, and that he has always looked at her as more a poem than a person. Is she angry at him for having the audacity to break the laws of nature, to intrude on the one thing that is supposed to be hers alone? Asking him to turn is asking him to respect the finality of death, to come to terms with and accept his loss, to let her rest in peace, to let her exist apart from him. She might ask those things as desperately as Leighton paints her.