Iconographic Analysis Of A Cheetah Essay

The iconographical analysis is now applied, starting with pre-iconography. This painting shows a a cheetah with a woman’s head lying on a rock in the centre. She has long red-hair and both eyes and mouth closed. On the left there is a man with a cloth wrapped around his waist standing on a lower ground. His left elbow rests on the rock and his head lays against the cheetah’s whose left paw touches his torso. In his right hand he holds a staff with a statuette on top which is round-shaped with wings. In the background behind the rock and the cheetah’s tail, there is a landscape consisting of an arid plain with two columns and trees at the far right. Behind the cheetah is a rectangular structure with an opening and erased letters. Behind the man is a tree and the same plain. We can also see the sky.

It is clear that Khnopff represents Oedipus and the Sphinx. The female feline seating on a rock can only be a Sphinx. Also, the fact that the man is by her side and not dead evokes that he is Oedipus. The painting presents all the iconographical elements of the story in accordance with Sophocles’s text.

Most of Khnopff’s contemporaries (Stuck, André, Moreau, etc.) respected the classic iconography of the Sphinx. Khnopff’s differs because no breast is shown while others clearly emphasised

Indeed, I believe that the Sphinx represents more than sexuality since Khnopff despised the new society which was equated with his withdrawal from it and solitude. In my opinion, this Sphinx is the stereotypical femme fatale but has another dimension because she is opposed to spiritual idealism, a sort of purity to be attained. I do not believe that resisting sexual temptation alone is enough to attain such a