Phaedra Confesses Her Love for Hippolytus to Oenone

This drawing is one of ten highly finished preparatory drawings which Girodet made for Pierre Didot's 1801 deluxe edition of Jean Baptiste Racine's "Oeuvres" (Paris, Pierre Didot l'aîné, 1801, 3 vols.). The artist designed five compositions for "Phèdre", and five for "Andromaque." "Phèdre," a dramatic tragedy in five parts, taken from Greek mythology and written in alexandrine verse, was first performed in 1677. The present sheet illustrates Act I, Scene 3 of "Phèdre", and was engraved by Raphael Urbain Massard (in vol. 2, pp. 422-423). In this scene, Phaedra, the wife of Theseus, confesses to her nurse Oenone her forbidden love for her stepson, Hippolytus.
Didot's three-volume edition of Racine's "Oeuvres" set a new standard for luxury in French book production, with full-page illustrations for the six plays included, each play being illustrated by the same artist for consistency. The Morgan preserves a copy of Didot's publication (of which only 250 examples were printed) in the Gordon Ray Collection (PML 140193-195), as well as three other preparatory drawings, two by Antoine-Denis Chaudet (1763-1810), one for "Esther" (Acc. No. 2002.12) and the other for "Athalie" (Acc. No. 2002.13), and one by François Gérard (1770-1837) for "Bajazet" (Acc. No. 2002.14). This composition was also engraved by Michel Olivier Le Bas in C.P. Landon, "Annales du Musée de l'école moderne des beaux-arts" (Paris, 1809, XVI bis, p. 67, pl. 41).