The Death of Procris, 1955

Description:

The Death of Procris is a mythological story From Ovid’s Metamorphoses that is a warning to newlyweds about the dangers of jealousy.   Procris is killed in error by her husband Cephalus as she spies on him in the forest, believing that he is meeting another woman, when he is actually speaking to the breeze as he cools himself on a riverbank. As Procris rustles in the leaves she startles Cephalus and he mortally wounds her with the javelin she presented to him as a gift.  In the upper right of our picture, the artist inscribed the words “Marry not that odious breeze,” Procris’s exclamation to her husband as she dies from her wound.