Explore the Analysis of this artwork.
While this painting is an homage to Ovid, Waterhouse spins the classical in imaginative and poetic ways. 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 colors are "near stained glass or jewels," according to Gleeson White.  Judith Yarnall also echoes the sentiment about the colors and mentions an "integrity of line" in the painting. She says that taken as a pair, Waterhouse's first two Circes prompt the question: "is she goddess or woman?" Circe Invidiosa exemplifies Waterhouse's experimentation with the femme fatale archetype, which pervaded an immense amount of late nineteenth-century art. However, Chris Woods argues that Waterhouse's portrayals of Circe are not wholly evil, destructive, or monstrous, much like one sees in paintings of female mythological figures by Gustave Moreau or other European Symbolists. In this painting, Circe becomes a tragic figure: she "cannot help what [she is] doing, and rather regret[s] it."
Ovid Circe European Symbolists femme fatale Gustave Moreau