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| Luzio Luzzi Reclining Sphinx with Small Ape before 1575 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Annibale Carracci Male Sphinx before 1609 drawing Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Carlo Maratti after Annibale Carracci Winged Sphinx and another Ornamental Motif after frescoes in Galleria Farnese, Rome before 1713 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Henry Fuseli Oedipus and the Sphinx (after Sophocles) 1770-72 drawing British Museum |
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| Louis-Jean Desprez Sepulchre in Egyptian Style with Sphinxes and Owl ca. 1779-84 wash drawing Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Maxime Du Camp Sphinx, Giza (partially excavated) 1850 salted paper print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Elihu Vedder The Questioner of the Sphinx 1863 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Oedipus and the Sphinx 1864 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Georg von Rosen The Sphinx 1887 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
Cadmus and Harmonia
Far, far from here,
The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay
Among the green Illyrian hills; and there
The sunshine in the happy glens is fair,
And by the sea, and in the brakes.
The grass is cool, the sea-side air
Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers
More virginal and sweet than ours.
And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes,
Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia,
Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore,
In breathless quiet, after all their ills;
Nor do they see their country, nor the place
Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills,
Nor the unhappy palace of their race,
Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more.
There those two live, far in the Illyrian brakes!
They had stay'd long enough to see,
In Thebes, the billow of calamity
Over their own dear children roll'd,
Curse upon curse, pang upon pang,
For years, they sitting helpless in their home,
A grey old man and woman; yet of old
The Gods had to their marriage come,
And at the banquet all the Muses sang.
Therefore they did not end their days
In sight of blood, but were rapt, far away,
To where the west-wind plays,
And murmurs of the Adriatic come
To those untrodden mountain-lawns; and there
Placed safely in changed forms, the pair
Wholly forgot their first sad life, and home,
And all that Theban woe, and stray
For ever through the glens, placid and dumb.
– Matthew Arnold (1852)
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| Odilon Redon Sphinx before 1916 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Johannes Josephus Aarts Oedipus and the Sphinx before 1934 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Leon Golub Wounded Sphinx 1965 lithograph Tate Gallery |
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| Joseph Beuys Electric Sphinx 1977 drawing Tate Gallery |
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| Ivor Abrahams The Sphinx 1978 screenprint Tate Gallery |
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| Francis Bacon Oedipus and the Sphinx (after Ingres) 1983 oil on canvas Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon |