 |
| Rembrandt van Rijn Old Man with Fur Hat ca. 1635 etching Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
-Woman-in-Profile-c1887-90-oil-on-canvas-Nasjonalmuseet-Oslo.jpg) |
| Valborg Dubois-Olsen Woman in Profile ca. 1887-90 oil on canvas Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo |
-1793-oil-on-canvas-Mus%C3%A9e-Saint-Loup-Troyes.jpg) |
| Jean-Louis Laneuville Portrait of Marie-Madeleine Danton-Camut (mother of Revolutionary leader Georges Danton) 1793 oil on canvas Musée Saint-Loup, Troyes |
 |
| Wybrand Hendriks Elisabeth de Haan and her husband Jacob Feitama 1790 oil on canvas Mauritshuis, The Hague |
 |
| Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder Portrait of Doctor Petrus von Clapis ca. 1535 gouache and oil paint on paper Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims |
 |
| Anders Zorn Portrait of poet Paul Verlaine 1895 etching Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
-1543-oil-on-panel-Kunsthistorisches-Museum-Vienna.jpg) |
| Hans Holbein the Younger Portrait of Doctor John Chambers (physician to King Henry VIII) 1543 oil on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
 |
| Luca Signorelli Head of a Man ca. 1485-90 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
 |
| Martel Schwichtenberg Frauen vor dem Haus 1921 oil on canvas Yale University Art Gallery |
 |
| George Romney Heads of Two Men ca. 1780 drawing Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
 |
| Albrecht Dürer Portrait of artist Michael Wolgemut (illustrator of the Nuremberg Chronicle) 1516 oil on panel Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg |
 |
| Quirin Boel after David Teniers the Younger Woman weighing Gold Coins before 1668 etching and engraving Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
 |
| Anders Zorn Portrait of arts patron Göthilda Fürstenberg 1898 oil on canvas Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden |
 |
| Aert Schouman Portrait of Margarita Duijvestein 1751 oil on canvas Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands |
-c1630-40-oil-on-panel-Kunstmuseum-Basel.jpg) |
| Paulus Lesire Philo of Alexandria ca. 1630-40 oil on panel (study head, retained in the studio) Kunstmuseum, Basel |
 |
| Leif Wigh Imogen Cunningham, Green Street, San Francisco 1975 gelatin silver print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
Athena: Do you really wish to entrust the final decision on your charge to me?
Chorus of Furies: We do indeed, as a worthy return for the worthy respect you have shown us.
Athena [turning to Orestes]: Stranger, what do you wish to say in your turn in reply to this? Tell me your country, your family and your misfortunes, and then rebut the charge these accusers have brought, if it is indeed with trust in justice that you are sitting keeping your vigil at this image near my hearth, a suppliant deserving respect, not one after the manner of Ixion.* To all this, give me a reply that I can readily understand.
Orestes: Lady Athena, I will begin from your last words by removing a great anxiety. I am not a suppliant seeking purification, and I have not sat down clasping your image with pollution on my hand. I will give you powerful proof of this. It is the law that a man who has committed homicide must not speak until blood has dripped over him from the slaughter of a young sucking beast at the hands of a man who can cleanse blood-pollution. I have long since been purified in this way at other houses, both by animal victims and by flowing streams. That is what I say to set this anxiety aside; now you will quickly learn my origin. I am an Argive, and you know my father well – Agamemnon, commander of the men who sailed in ships, the man together with whom you once caused the city of Ilium to be a city no more. He perished ingloriously when he came home: my black-hearted mother killed him after shrouding him in a richly embroidered net, which testified to his murder in the bath. And when I returned home, having previously been in exile, I killed my mother – I will not deny it – putting her to death in return and requital for my beloved father. And for this Loxias jointly shares the responsibility, because he foretold painful sufferings, which acted like goads to my heart, if I did not do something to those responsible for this crime. Now I ask you to judge the issue of whether I did it with justice or not; however I fare at your hands, I shall be content with the outcome.
– Aeschylus, from Eumenides (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)
*Ixion, who had murdered his father-in-law (treacherously and without provocation, in order to avoid paying his just debts), supplicated Zeus for purification, was granted it, and proved himself utterly unworthy of this divine favour by attempting to seduce Hera. A suppliant "with trust in justice [and] deserving respect" would thus certainly not be one "after the manner of Ixion." Orestes evidently also detects in Athena's words some concern as to whether he, like Ixion, is still under blood-pollution, as one would prima facie expect a suppliant homicide to be.