Oedipus Explains the Riddle of the Sphinx

Greece to Paris, 530 BCE–1890

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Oedipus Explains the Riddle of the Sphinx

1808

Oil on canvas, 74 1/2 × 56 3/4 in. Louvre, Paris

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780–1867). Look at the edge of the body: a single unbroken contour, drawn as if with a pen, with no visible brushwork inside it.

Look at

  • The figure is in strict profile, so the outline from brow to heel reads as one continuous line.
  • Skin is smoothed to an even, waxy finish.
  • The lit body stands against a dark cave, which makes the contour sharper still.
  • Colour is kept to a few flat notes: tan skin, red cloth, ochre rock, blue sky.
  • Oedipus answers the Sphinx's riddle; a foot and bones lie at lower left.

Image: Photograph by Shonagon (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (faithful reproduction of a public-domain 2D work)

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