, Spain, mid-18th century The revived
Mannerist sphinx of the late 15th century is sometimes thought of as the "French sphinx". Her coiffed head is erect and she has the breasts of a young woman. Often she wears ear drops and
pearls as ornaments. Her body is naturalistically rendered as a recumbent lioness. Such sphinxes were revived when the
grottesche or "grotesque" decorations of the unearthed
Domus Aurea of
Nero were brought to light in late 15th-century Rome, and she was incorporated into the classical vocabulary of
arabesque designs that spread throughout Europe in engravings during the 16th and 17th centuries. Sphinxes were included in the decoration of the
loggia of the
Vatican Palace by the workshop of
Raphael (1515–20), which updated the vocabulary of the Roman
grottesche. The first appearances of sphinxes in French art are in the
School of Fontainebleau in the 1520s and 1530s and she continues into the
Late Baroque style of the French
Régence (1715–1723). From France, she spread throughout Europe, becoming a regular feature of the outdoors decorative sculpture of 18th-century palace gardens, as in the
Upper Belvedere Palace in
Vienna,
Sanssouci Park in
Potsdam,
La Granja in Spain,
Branicki Palace in
Białystok, or the late
Rococo examples in the grounds of the Portuguese
Queluz National Palace (of perhaps the 1760s), with
ruffs and clothed chests ending with a little cape. , a
Symbolist depiction of
Oedipus and the Sphinx Sphinxes are a feature of the
neoclassical interior decorations of
Robert Adam and his followers, returning closer to the undressed style of the
grottesche. They had an equal appeal to artists and designers of the
Romanticism and subsequent
Symbolism movements in the 19th century. Most of these sphinxes alluded to the Greek sphinx and the myth of
Oedipus, rather than the Egyptian, although they may not have wings.
The Decadent Movement, a European movement that was attributed to the notion of "decadence" around the 1890s, implores the main notion of finding beauty in the decline of civilization in the form of macabre or taboo subjects such as the sphinx. The motif of the sphinx can also be connected to the motif of the "femme fatale" figure in decadent texts in which a typically female-like figure or beast seduces and murders men. The "femme fatale" is used to establish a decline or decay ranging from perversion, death, prostitution, and other taboos of Victorian society. Oscar Wilde, a known Decadent writer, utilized this motif in his poem "The Sphinx". The poem itself establishes a connection between the Sphinx and the French due to underlying social decline such as the French Empire collapsing. The poem revolves around an isolated and anxious man who runs throughout the city, his anxiety and fears taking on the personified image of a grandiose beast that has the makeup of a dragon and lion. While not inherently stated, the beast is likely that of a decadent form of a sphinx due to its appearance and grand nature.
Greece , 14th – 12th century BC, in the
Archaeological Museum of Thebes. In the
Bronze Age, the Hellenes had trade and cultural contacts with Egypt. Before the time that
Alexander the Great occupied Egypt, the Greek name,
sphinx, was already applied to these statues. The historians and geographers of Greece such as
Herodotus wrote extensively about Egyptian culture. There was a single
sphinx in Greek mythology, a unique demon of destruction and bad luck.
Apollodorus describes the sphinx as having a woman's face, the body and tail of a lion and the wings of a bird.
Pliny the Elder mentions that Ethiopia produces plenty of sphinxes, with brown hair and breasts, corroborated by 20th-century archeologists.
Statius describes her as a winged monster, with pallid cheeks, eyes tainted with corruption, plumes clotted with gore and talons on livid hands. Sometimes, the wings are specified to be those of an
eagle, and the tail to be
serpent-headed. According to
Hesiod, the Sphinx was a daughter of
Orthrus and an unknown she—either the
Chimera,
Echidna, or
Ceto. According to Apollodorus she was a daughter of Echidna and
Typhon. The sphinx was the emblem of the ancient city-state of
Chios, and appeared on seals and the obverse side of coins from the 6th century BC until the 3rd century AD.
Riddle of the Sphinx The Sphinx is said to have guarded the entrance to the Greek city of
Thebes, asking a
riddle to travellers to allow them passage. The exact riddle asked by the Sphinx was not specified by early tellers of the myth, and was not standardized as the one given below until late in Greek history. It was said in late lore that
Hera or
Ares sent the Sphinx from her
Aethiopian homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to Thebes in Greece where she asked all passersby the most famous riddle in history: "Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" She strangled and devoured anyone who could not answer.
Oedipus solved the riddle by answering: "Man—who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then uses a walking stick in old age". there was a second riddle: "There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?" The answer is "day and night" (both words—
ἡμέρα and
νύξ, respectively—are feminine in Ancient Greek). This second riddle is also found in a Gascon version of the myth and could be very ancient. Bested at last, the Sphinx then threw herself from her high rock and died; or, in some versions Oedipus killed her. An alternative version tells that she devoured herself. In both cases, Oedipus can therefore be recognized as a "
liminal" or threshold figure, helping effect the transition between the old religious practices, represented by the death of the Sphinx, and the rise of the new,
Olympian gods.
The riddle in popular culture In
Jean Cocteau's retelling of the Oedipus legend,
The Infernal Machine, the Sphinx tells Oedipus the answer to the riddle in order to kill herself so that she did not have to kill any more, and also to make him love her. He leaves without ever thanking her for giving him the answer to the riddle. The scene ends when the Sphinx and
Anubis ascend back to the heavens. There are mythic, anthropological, psychoanalytic and parodic interpretations of the Riddle of the Sphinx, and of Oedipus's answer to it.
Sigmund Freud describes "the question of where babies come from" as a riddle of the Sphinx. Numerous riddle books use the Sphinx in their title or illustrations. File:Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and little girl with capital and finial in the form of a sphinx MET DP116926.jpg|Funerary stele, 530 BC,
Greece File:Limestone funerary stele (shaft) surmounted by two sphinxes Greece 530 BCE.jpg|
Limestone funerary stele (shaft) surmounted by two sphinxes. Greece, 5th century BC. File:Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx.jpg|Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx, 530 BC File:Carved tomb in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum - panoramio.jpg|Sphinxes on the
Lycian sarcophagus of Sidon (430–420 BC) File:Naxos Sphinx with humans for size.jpg|The
Sphinx of Naxos, on its 12.5-meter
Ionic column,
Delphi, 560 BC (reconstitution)
Romania natural rock formation in the Bucegi Mountains
Sfinxul is a natural rock formation in the
Bucegi Natural Park which is in the Bucegi Mountains of Romania. This rock formation is named for its resemblance to the Sphinx of Giza, and is located at an altitude of within the Babele complex of rock formations. == Asia ==