HouseOfAtreus

THE HOUSE OF ATREUS — PROJECT NOTES

May 2026

THE CONCEPT

An epic animated "painting" in the form of a long frieze.
Spanning the full curse of the House of Atreus — from the crime of Tantalus
to the death of Orestes and the transformation of the Furies.
AI generation as primary tool for image-making.
Movement slow enough to be almost stillness. A frieze that breathes.

Inspired by:

• John Collier's painting of Clytemnestra (seen at Fatale Vrouwen, Antwerp/Groningen 2003)
• The exhibition "Caravaggio e Artemisia: la sfida di Giuditta" at Palazzo Barberini, Rome
• Anne Carson — especially Grief Lessons (Euripides translations), Norma Jeane Baker of Troy,
  Antigonick. Carson's criterion: does it hurt enough to be worth translating.

THE STRUCTURE — A FRIEZE IN THREE PARTS

LEFT PANEL — CHAOS OF THE FATHERS
The accumulated male crime across generations.
Violent, crowded, fratricidal. Appetite destroying appetite.

Key moments:

• Tantalus serving the feast of Pelops to the gods
• Pelops winning Hippodamia — the chariot race, the bribe, the murder of Myrtilus
• Myrtilus cursing the house with his dying breath (this is the engine of everything)
• Atreus serving Thyestes his own children as a meal
  (the exact repetition of Tantalus — the curse feeding on itself)
• The brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus

CENTER — Iphigenia (THE STILL POINT)
She is the hinge. The calm center of the entire frieze.
Everything before her is the accumulated curse.
Everything after her is consequence.

She walks toward the altar in her wedding clothes.
She came dressed for a marriage.
She goes willingly — not resignation but chosen dignity.
Something more terrifying than fear.

Around her: wind beginning to move. The sails behind her starting to fill.
The ships that will sail to Troy are already implicit in her stillness.

Visual note: She may be nearly alone in her panel. Space around her.
The chaos on both sides kept at a distance by her composure.

RIGHT PANEL — CHAOS OF THE CONSEQUENCES
The war, the returns, the vengeance, the pursuit.

Key figures:

• Troy burning
• Cassandra — prophesying to no one, always already unheard
• Clytemnestra — ten years of cold waiting, the red carpet, the bath, the axe
  (She is avenging Iphigenia. She is not wrong.)
• Electra — burning in long cold fury, waiting for Orestes
• Orestes — killing his mother, then running, the Furies behind him
• The Furies — pursuing, until the trial at Athens, until Athena's vote,
  until they become the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, and the curse is spent
• Helen — serene, untouched, sailing home to Sparta as if nothing happened
  She survives everything. Which is its own kind of catastrophe.
  (See Carson's Norma Jeane Baker of Troy — Helen as Marilyn Monroe)

THE WOMEN OF THE CYCLE

This is really their story. The men cause; the women endure and respond.

Iphigenia — sacrificed in her wedding dress. Hinge of the entire myth.
In Euripides (and Carson's translation) she goes bravely.
In some versions Artemis spirits her away — she becomes a priestess
at Tauris, where Orestes eventually finds her. (Iphigenia in Tauris)

Clytemnestra — the greatest of them. Ten years planning. She is not a monster.
She is a mother whose daughter was killed by her husband
for a war, for wind, for ships.
The painting that started all of this: John Collier's Clytemnestra,
standing after the murder, unapologetic.

Cassandra — brought back from Troy as Agamemnon's war prize.
She sees everything. No one believes her. She is killed anyway.
The prophet as perpetual victim of her own gift.

Electra — the cold fire. Years of waiting. Pure in her hatred.
The flip side of Clytemnestra — same grief, opposite direction.

Helen — the cause who is never the agent. Beautiful, surviving, returned.
Did she go willingly with Paris? Depends on the telling.
The face that launched the ships. Also: Clytemnestra's sister.
Also: Iphigenia's aunt. The family eats itself.

Hippodamia — Pelops's wife, won through cheating and murder.
Where it really begins for the women.

THE SISTERS

The detail that unlocked the whole project:
Clytemnestra and Helen are sisters — both daughters of Leda.
Helen by Zeus (the swan, the egg).
Clytemnestra by Leda's mortal husband Tyndareus.

Two sisters. Two brothers (Agamemnon, Menelaus).
Two marriages. Two fates entirely.
Helen's abduction/departure causes the war.
Iphigenia — Clytemnestra's daughter, Helen's niece — is sacrificed to fight it.
Clytemnestra kills the man who killed her daughter to sail to bring back
her sister.
The family is the trap.

THE FULL CURSE — CHRONOLOGY

1. Tantalus kills and serves Pelops to the gods → condemned, curse begins
2. Pelops wins chariot race by cheating → kills Myrtilus → Myrtilus curses house
3. Atreus vs Thyestes — Thyestes seduces Atreus's wife
   Atreus serves Thyestes his own children
4. Agamemnon (son of Atreus) and Menelaus — the next generation
5. Paris takes Helen → thousand ships
6. Iphigenia sacrificed at Aulis for winds → ships sail
7. Ten years of Troy — Cassandra prophesying, unheard
8. Troy falls — Agamemnon returns with Cassandra
9. Clytemnestra (with Aegisthus, son of Thyestes) kills Agamemnon and Cassandra
10. Electra waits — Orestes returns — kills Aegisthus and Clytemnestra
11. Furies pursue Orestes — trial at Athens — Athena acquits
12. Furies become Eumenides — curse spent — a new order begins
    (Helen sails home to Sparta. Untouched. As if nothing happened.)

ON AUDIENCE

Carson was also told there was no audience for this kind of work.
Academic classicists thought her insufficiently serious.
Poets thought her too classical.
She fell between categories for years. Then the audience found her.

The work doesn't need to explain itself or make itself easy.
The format — animated painting, AI generation, ancient myth, moving frieze —
doesn't fit anywhere. That means it could make its own space.

Living in Rome is not nothing. The Barberini Caravaggio is always there.
The material is not abstract. It is walkable.

REFERENCES AND RESEARCH

Anne Carson:

• Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides (includes Iphigenia Among the Taurians)
• Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (Helen as Marilyn Monroe)
• Antigonick (Sophocles redrawn — form as meaning)
• Autobiography of Red (myth cracked open by contemporary sensibility)

Exhibitions:

• Fatale Vrouwen 1860–1910, Groninger Museum / KMSKA Antwerpen 2003
  Catalog: ed. Henk van Os, published KMSKA 2002
  Key work: John Collier, Clytemnestra (the painting that started all of this)
• Caravaggio e Artemisia: la sfida di Giuditta, Palazzo Barberini, Rome
  Catalog: ed. Maria Cristina Terzaghi and Flaminia Gennari, Officina Libraria

Paintings to return to:

• John Collier, Clytemnestra After the Murder (1882)
• Caravaggio, Judith and Holofernes (Palazzo Barberini, permanent collection)
• Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes — she leans in with full body weight
• John William Waterhouse — multiple figures from the cycle
• Frederic Leighton, Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon (1869)

Primary texts:

• Aeschylus, The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides)
• Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis and Iphigenia Among the Taurians
• Euripides, Electra and Orestes
• Sophocles, Electra
• Pindar, Olympian Ode 1 (the Pelops story — oldest version, most sympathetic)

OPEN QUESTIONS

• Where does the frieze begin? First image, first figure?
• Does Iphigenia face left (toward the past) or right (toward what she is
  walking into)? Or does she face the viewer?
• Is Helen present in the left panel at all — before Troy — or does she
  only appear in the right, returning?
• Cassandra: does she appear twice — once in Troy, once at Mycenae?
• The Furies: are they the same figures as the Erinyes in the left panel,
  born from Ouranos's blood? The curse made visible across the whole frieze?
• What is the final image? The Eumenides given their home beneath Athens?
  Or Helen, alone, sailing?