The Sacrifice of Iphigenia

Pietro Testa

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Mycenaean king Agamemnon was chosen, together with his brother Menelaus—Helen's aggrieved husband—to lead the Greeks in the war against Troy, but unfavorable winds prevented the ships from setting sail. Consulting a seer, the soldiers learned that Agamemnon had offended Diana by killing a doe sacred to the goddess, who could be appeased only through the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. The girl was lured from home with a false promise of marriage to Achilles, depicted at right, who was angered that his name had been used to deceive her and offered to fight on her behalf. Although the maiden instead heroically consented to the sacrifice, the goddess took pity on her: shrouding the site, Diana substituted a deer and carried off Iphigenia. The copper plate for the print is in the Calcografia Nazionale in Rome (inv.989). A painting of the same subject by Testa (with minor differences) is in the Galleria Spada in Rome (inv. 312).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art