Wounded Eurydice

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot · 1868–70

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

55.9 × 41.3 cm (22 × 16 1/4 in.); Framed: 87 × 73.7 × 11.5 cm (34 1/4 × 29 × 4 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Romanticism

Wounded Eurydice catches Corot at his most poetic — a mythological figure dissolving into landscape as if the forest itself were grieving alongside her. By the late 1860s, Corot had developed a late style quite distinct from his earlier plein-air work. His palette settled into silvery greens and diffused light, his brushwork becoming loose and almost breath-like, with foliage rendered in soft, feathery strokes rather than defined forms. Figures from classical mythology appeared more frequently in this period, depicted not as heroic subjects but as inhabitants of a dreaming natural world. Eurydice, bitten by a serpent and destined for the underworld, suited this mood exactly — tragedy made tender through atmosphere rather than drama. Corot reportedly painted at remarkable speed in this period, sometimes completing sizeable canvases in a single session, which may account for the fluid, spontaneous quality his late works carry even at large scale. A skilled hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas preserves the tonal subtlety and atmospheric depth that make this painting so affecting — the kind of qualities that reproduce poorly in print but translate faithfully when an artist works directly in oil, layer by careful layer, as Corot himself did.