In an episode recounted in the tragic play Agamemnon by Aeschylus, the stern-faced queen is shown at the palace of Argos, shortly after she has killed her husband Agamemnon in revenge for his sacrifice of their youngest daughter Iphigenia to secure favourable winds for the journey to the siege of Troy.

Clytemnestra is wearing a delicate gold headpiece, based on the small "Helen of Troy" diadem, part of the so-called Treasure of Priam discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s.

The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1882, accompanied by a line from Aeschylus's play: "Him twice I smote – twice groaning prone he fell, / With limbs relaxed; then, prostrate where he lay, / Him with third blow I dowered, votive gift / To Hades, guardian of the dead below."

Around 1914, Collier painted a second version of the scene, correcting many of the details of the Mycenaean period.

Clytemnestra wears a long skirt based on Minoan discoveries, replacing the robe in the 1882 version, and the column from the Treasury of Atreus has been put up the right way.