Focus on this artwork and analyze the Rome and theatricality.
This work relays a certain level of theatricality, which can definitely be attributed to the main source of the work being a play, but also to the result of Cabanel's time spent painting in Italy, influencing his decorative works commissions. Cabanel received the Prix de Rome award for his accomplishments in history painting in 1845. He spent the next five years in Rome, absorbing the dramatic Renaissance and Baroque works that permeate the city. Upon his return to Paris, Cabanel was commissioned to help decorate the Salon des Cariatides in the Hôtel de Ville. The final work was destroyed, but his cartoons show influences of Michelangelo's heroic and thoughtful figures of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Raphael's introspective philosophers and mathematicians of the School of Athens, and the theatrical compositions and movement of Annibale Carracci's Farnese Gallery decorations. These cartoons are evidence of the effect that Roman works of the past had on Cabanel. The heroic figures are absent from Phaedra, but there is an air of brooding tension and drama that can reasonably be attributed to his influence by the Renaissance and Baroque masters.
Phaedra history painting Farnese Gallery Sistine Chapel ceiling Baroque Renaissance School of Athens Prix de Rome Salon Hôtel de Ville