''Orestes and Electra'' has been the subject and title of several works of art, including two different sculptural groups in the collections of the

Naples National Archaeological Museum The National Archaeological Museum of Naples ( it, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, italic=no, sometimes abbreviated to MANN) is an important Italian archaeological museum, particularly for ancient Roman remains. Its collection includes wo ...

Clothed

One is a 2.1m high

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

sculpture, once thought to depict

Orestes In Greek mythology, Orestes or Orestis (; grc-gre, Ὀρέστης ) was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, and the brother of Electra. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and ...

and

Electra Electra (; grc, Ήλέκτρα) is one of the most popular mythological characters in tragedies.Evans (1970), p. 79 She is the main character in two Greek tragedies, '' Electra'' by Sophocles and '' Electra'' by Euripides. She is also the centra ...

. It shows a heavily draped adult female on the right, looking down on and apparently beckoning a partially nude younger male or child, who looks up at her. A marble copy was produced between 1685 and 1688 for the

Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 19 ...

, copied from a cast of the original entrusted to Benoît Massou then Martin Carlier and to Michel Monier. It was initially interpreted as ''Peace between the Greeks and the Roman'' but was later interpreted as relating the episode in which the young

Papirius The gens Papiria was a patrician family at ancient Rome. According to tradition, the Papirii had already achieved prominence in the time of the kings, and the first Rex Sacrorum and Pontifex Maximus of the Republic were members of this gens. Luc ...

, known as Praetextatus, having been permitted to attend a sitting of the Roman Senate with his father, thwarts his mother's curiosity by humorously telling her that the Senate had been debating whether it were better for the State that a man have two wives or a woman have two husbands. It was placed in the Ballroom Grove in 1738, moved to the

Tuileries Garden The Tuileries Garden (french: Jardin des Tuileries, ) is a public garden located between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. Created by Catherine de' Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in ...

during the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

and in the 19th century replaced ''Poetus and Arria on the Green Carpet'' in the Main Perspective.

Nude male

The other depicts a young nude male and a young clothed female, of the same age and height, leaning on each other.Image
fro

/ref> This is now thought to be Orestes and Electra.

References

Collections of the National Archaeological Museum, Naples Hellenistic-style Roman sculptures {{Italy-sculpture-stub