Oedipus and the Sphinx

Ingres's Oedipus and the Sphinx of 1808 depicts the confrontation between the doomed king and the man-killing monster at the gates of Thebes — Oedipus standing naked before the Sphinx as she poses her famous riddle. The painting's contrast between the smooth marble-like ideality of Oedipus's nude form and the grotesque monster recalls Greek vase painting while the romantic landscape setting grounds it in contemporary sensibility. Ingres returned to the subject in a smaller 1827 version, suggesting its continuing hold on his imagination as a meditation on human intelligence confronting irrational destruction.

The muscular male nude demonstrates Ingres's mastery of academic figure drawing, with each muscle precisely rendered. The contrast between the smoothly modeled hero and the shadowy cave setting creates dramatic tension.