"He smothers her": plate 13 from Othello (Act 5, Scene 2)
Théodore Chassériau French
Subject William Shakespeare British
Not on view
In 1844 Eugène Piot commissioned the young Chassériau to prepare fifteen illustrations to Shakespeare's Othello. Inspired by a series of ground-breaking Hamlet lithographs that Delacroix had created one year earlier, the younger artist opted for the more linear technique of etching. His expressive conception of form had been learned in Ingres's studio then developed under Delacroix. In the series, key exchanges offer a compressed summary of much of the play, with a final cluster devoted to the tragic conclusion. Here, Othello smothers Desdemona, convinced by the jealous Iago that she is an adultress.
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