Oedipus Explains the Riddle of the Sphinx

1808, enlarged 1827

Oil on canvas, 189 × 144 cm · Louvre, Paris

Painted in Rome as a required work for the French Academy while Ingres was a student at the Villa Medici. He enlarged the canvas in 1827 and showed it at the Salon that year.

Oedipus, nude and holding a spear, leans toward the Sphinx on her rock as he answers.
Bones of earlier victims lie among the rocks.
Signed and dated 1808 at lower left.
Owned by the duc d’Orléans; bequeathed to the Louvre in 1878.

The Sphinx killed travellers who could not answer her riddle. Oedipus solved it and became king of Thebes, unaware he had already killed his father and would marry his mother.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain