Year 1892 Artist John William Waterhouse Period Romanticism | Medium Oil on canvas Created 1892 Media Paint, Oil paint, Canvas | |
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Dimensions 179 cm × 85 cm (70 in × 33 in) Location Art Gallery of South Australia Similar John William Waterhouse artwork, Canvas, Romantic artwork | ||
Circe Invidiosa is a painting by John William Waterhouse completed in 1892. It is his second depiction, after Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (1891), of the Greek mythological character, Circe, this time while she is poisoning the water to turn Scylla, Circe's rival for Glaucus, "into a hideous monster". Anthony Hobson describes the painting as being "invested with an aura of menace, which has much to do with the powerful colour scheme of deep greens and blues [Waterhouse] employed so well". Those colours are "near stained glass or jewels", according to Gleeson White. Judith Yarnall also echoes the sentiment about the colours, and mentions an "integrity of line" in the painting. She says that taken as a pair, Waterhouse's Circes prompt the question: "is she goddess or woman?"
Circe Invidiosa is part of the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, which also owns Waterhouse's The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius.
Waterhouse later returned to the subject of Circe a third time with The Sorceress (c. 1911).