Desdemona Retiring to Bed

The scene is the third of Act IV of Othello, on the night Othello will kill his wife. After supper he orders Desdemona to bed and tells her to send her attendant away. Before she does, Emilia, Iago's wife, helps her undress. Desdemona talks about her mother's maid, Barbary, whose lover went mad and left her, and who died singing an old song about a willow. That night Desdemona cannot get the song out of her head. She has already had her wedding sheets put on the bed, and she asks Emilia, if she should die first, to wrap her in one of them.

Chassériau puts Emilia, in red, behind her mistress, unfastening her gown, with the white bed waiting at the right and a lamp burning on the left. He had etched this composition in 1844 as the eighth plate of a series on the play. In 1849 he painted it again, on a wooden panel about 42 centimetres high, keeping Desdemona in a long white dress.