Desdemona (The song of the willow)

Chassériau, Théodore (1819-1856)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

1849

Height:

34.9 cm  (13 3/4 in.)

Width:

27.0 cm  (10 5/8 in.)

Technique / Medium:

oil on wood

Description

This painting is based on a print, part of a suite of fifteen etchings by Chassériau illustrating Shakespeare’s Othello, which was published in Paris in 1844. It depicts act 4, scene 3 of the play, a final moment of calm preceding Desdemona’s murder by her husband, Othello. The lyre she holds was not described by Shakespeare; Chassériau observed it in an 1836 production in which the role was performed by the celebrated singer Maria Malibran Garcia (1808–1836), called La Malibran, who was the model for the figure of Desdemona in the etching. (from Metropolitan Museum website)

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Lyre [3501]

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

RIdIM record id

4499