Browse The Collection


Costume Plate - Furie

Costume Plate - Furie, ca. 1779, Lithograph
Unknown Artist
#0000.1633.0001

Furie is a character from the 1779 opera Iphigénie en Tauride by German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, written for the French stage.  Based on the Greek tragedy by Euripides, sleeping Orestes is visited by the Furies who seek revenge for the slaying of his mother, whom he killed for murdering his father, Agamemon.

Here Furie is imagined in full 18th century dress, with a dagger in one hand and clutching a fist-full of serpents in the other.  Serpents also appear as a design motif on her skirt.