Ahead of the Trojan War, the Greek fleet leader Agamemnon needs to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to appease the goddess Artemis and receive the wind necessary to sail to Troy and lay siege on the city.

Foremost and largest in the image is a blonde woman with large eyes and a lacy white dress, passively seated with her clasped hands in her lap.

[1] Delvaux included ancient Greek and Roman elements in his paintings throughout his career and The Sacrifice of Iphigenia was made during a period in the late 1960s when he frequently used stories from classical mythology in his works.

[1] The art historian and archaeologist Philippe Jockey [fr] says The Sacrifice of Iphigenia is an example of how Delvaux used conventions from classical sculpture in his work, and is a painting that "demands a considerable artistic culture from the viewer".

[3] The uses of architecture, illogical composition, theatricality and odd angles in The Sacrifice of Iphigenia show influence from Giorgio de Chirico, but instead of the columns and arcades typical of Chiricio's paintings, Delvaux has depicted a Northern European city.

[1] In Der neue Pauly, Andrejs Petrowski and Bert Klein highlight the complexity of the painting and interpret it as a work about sexual initiation, where the woman's death should be understood through the expression la petite mort (lit.

[2] The Argentine writer Julio Cortázar used details from The Sacrifice of Iphigenia and other Delvaux paintings in his erotic short story "Siestas", published in the volume Último round (1969).