Oedipus Taken Down from the Tree

French artist Jean-François Millet painted this mythological scene in 1847, one of his rare departures from peasant subjects. Shepherds rescue the infant Oedipus, who was hung in a tree and left to die because his father Laius feared the prophecy that his son would kill him. The dramatic rescue unfolds against a darkening sky.

This painting marked Millet's breakthrough at the Paris Salon after earlier rejections. Beneath the surface lies a hidden painting of Saint Jerome, rejected by the Salon the previous year. Millet reused the canvas, painting over the earlier work. The vertical composition creates urgency as figures strain to free the abandoned child. The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa acquired the work in 1914, where it remains one of the few mythological subjects in Millet's oeuvre.