Oedipus and the Sphinx by Gustave Moreau
Oedipus (right) was born to a royal family. His father, King Laius, heard a prophecy from an oracle that his son would one day grow up to kill him and marry his own mother, so he abandoned him as a baby on a mountain. A shepherd found him and took him to the King of another city, Corinth, who brought him up as one of their own. On a journey to Thebes, he had a fight on the road with a man and killed him. That stranger was King Laius. At the gate of Thebes he encountered and triumphed over the Sphinx, a monster who had been terrorizing the city. His victory over the monster was celebrated in Thebes that they gave him the vacant throne and the widowed queen as a wife, by which the prophecy was fulfilled.
There is no happy ending because eventually after discovering the truth, the queen kills herself and Oedipus blinds himself. This painting shows Oedipus’s confrontation with the Sphinx which is simmering with sexual tension. She has the body of a lion, the wings of a bird and the face, breast and coiffured hair of a young beautiful blonde woman. She’s presented as a “castrating” femme fatale (view Feature 4 of Symbolism). Her painful claws are digging into his flesh and hind legs are pressing onto his genital area. He seems to be staring her down in defiance and she appears to be trying to hypnotize him.
The danger she poses is clear to the viewer from the dead bodies torn to pieces at the bottom of the painting. They were once travelers on that mountain path like Oedipus himself but failed to answer her riddle. “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?” He answered, “Man, who crawls as an infant, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses a walking stick at old age.” The she-monster was so upset about him answering her correctly that she killed herself.
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