Cassandra

De Morgan's 'Cassandra' takes up the Trojan prophetess cursed by Apollo to speak true prophecies that no one would believe — a figure of knowledge rendered impotent by the refusal of those in power to listen. The subject carries an obvious resonance for a woman artist in the Victorian period, when women's intellectual and moral authority was routinely dismissed. De Morgan's Spiritualist milieu also gave Cassandra a particular charge: the prophetess who perceives beyond the veil of the material world into deeper truth aligns with the Spiritualist medium who claims similar perceptual gifts. The date of this work is unrecorded, but stylistically it belongs to De Morgan's mature period with its characteristic handling of agitated drapery and intense outward gaze. De Morgan treated several prophetic and visionary female figures — Ariadne, Sibyl, Cassandra — as linked types: women who possess truth but are denied the authority to act on it.

The figure of Cassandra is rendered in agitated drapery that mirrors her psychological state, the fabric pulled and twisted in contrast to De Morgan's more serene processional figures. A cool blue-grey tonality suggests the Trojan night or an indeterminate visionary space, and the handling of Cassandra's hair in loose, energy-charged strands departs from the controlled coiffures of her calmer subjects.