Sujet

Sappho and Alcaeus, 1881. Creator: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

Légende

Sappho and Alcaeus, 1881. In 1870, the Dutch-born, Belgian-trained artist Alma-Tadema moved to London, where he found a ready market among the wealthy middle classes for paintings re-creating scenes of domestic life in imperial Roman times. In this work, however, he turns to early Greece to illustrate a passage by the ancient Greek poet Hermesianax (active ca. 330 BC) preserved in Atheneaus, Deipnosophistae, "Banquet of the Learned," book 2, line 598. On the island of Lesbos (Mytilene), in the late 7th century BC, Sappho and her companions listen rapturously as the poet Alcaeus plays a "kithara." Striving for verisimilitude, Alma-Tadema copied the marble seating of the Theater of Dionysos in Athens, although he substituted the names of members of Sappho's sorority for those of the officials incised on the Athenian prototype.

Crédit

Photo12/Heritage Images/Heritage Art

Notre référence

HRM23B22_161

Model release

NA

Property release

NA

Licence

Droits gérés

Format disponible

38,5Mo (1,8Mo) / 42,0cm x 23,0cm / 4960 x 2713 (300dpi)

Mots clés

exterior outdoors Europe portrait coast women woman people group man men music sitting stone arts painting coastal playing playhouse panoramic musician art guy theatre island listening British museum Netherlands Dutch color marble amphitheatre Greece location Victorian century musical instrument musical instruments Britain image literature seated companion illustrated lesbos oil Painting Colour 19th century Lyre Hellenistic poet Ancient Greece 1880s Ancient Greek nineteenth century 6th century BC classicism Mitilena TGN illustration outside oil young women young man young men young woman Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema Laurens Alma-Tadema Laurens Alma Tadema Lawrence Alma-Tadema oil on panel Sappho Alma-Tadema Lawrence Sir Alma-Tadema Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema Lawrence Alma Tadema Lawrence playing an instrument KITHARA letterbox format Walters Art Museum kithera Heritage Art oil on panel Lawrence Alma Tadema Low Countries 19th-century Lourens Alma Tadema Alcaeus of Mytilene Mytilene Alcaeus of Hermesianax