he De Morgan Collection, The De Morgan Foundation (Exhibited at Cannon Hall Museum, Barnsley, United Kingdom)
Evelyn De Morgan painted Cassandra in 1898, taking a classic Greek myth and turning it into a really sharp statement about women being ignored. The painting shows the Princess of Troy having a total breakdown and tearing at her hair while her city is literally burning behind her. You can clearly see the wooden Trojan Horse and the Greek army invading in the background.
The backstory is that the god Apollo gave Cassandra the ability to predict the future. However, when she turned down his romantic advances, he cursed her. She would always predict the future perfectly, but absolutely no one would ever believe her. In the painting, she stands completely helpless, proven right but entirely unable to stop the disaster.
The details in the composition really hammer home how trapped she is. Cassandra is wearing a vibrant blue mantle, which historians point out is a traditional symbol of her wisdom and prophetic knowledge. At the same time, she is surrounded by Apollo's symbols. The snake patterns winding up the gold panel and the laurel leaf crown in her hair represent his oppressive curse. De Morgan even draped the laurel leaves over her shoulders to intentionally look like heavy manacles keeping her tied down.
Beyond just telling a myth, this piece acts as a massive feminist metaphor. De Morgan was a strong advocate for women's rights, and she used Cassandra’s tragic situation—being completely immobilized by a patriarchal society that refuses to listen to her—to represent how women were politically, socially, and economically silenced during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.
The above painting is a good example of art during Edwardian period, a mic of the realistic naturalism of the Renaissance with the coming modernism that followed. The painting not only depicts a theme from Greek mythology which was a major source of paintings of this period, but also carries the expression and depth of human emotions, as well as the agony, dilemma and dichotomic treatment of a woman in the society. It also represents the feeling of being there, of being seen, but never truly understood- I feeling which many individuals have experienced throughout their lives.
