Sappho and Phaon
Sappho and Phaon | |
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Artist | Jacques-Louis David |
Year | 1809 |
Medium | oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 225.3 cm × 262 cm (88.7 in × 103 in) |
Location | Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg |
Sappho and Phaon is an 1809 neoclassical painting by the French painter Jacques-Louis David of Cupid, Sappho and her lover Phaon. It was commissioned by Prince Nikolai Yusupov for his Moika Palace and is now the only painting by David in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.[1]
Sappho and Phaon was the second of David's major paintings to take a mythological love story as its subject, after The Loves of Paris and Helen from 1788.[2] It is visually very similar to that earlier work – the two paintings are sufficiently similar that a preparatory drawing for Sappho and Phaon was traditionally identified as being a sketch for Paris and Helen.[3] It may also have recalled the painting Sappho Singing her Poetry and Accompanying Herself on the Lyre by David's painting tutor Joseph-Marie Vien, though that painting is now lost and no images of it survive.[4]
Sappho is shown sitting in a chair at the foot of a bed in a classically decorated room with columns, a marble floor and a view to a rural landscape outside (with Venus's birds, doves, sitting on the doorstep). Phaon stands behind the chair holding a spear and bow. On her knee is a scroll with some of her verses in praise of Phaon and Cupid kneels in front of her, holding up her lyre, which she tries to play with her right hand whilst leaning her head back to let Phaon cradle her head in his left arm.
See also
References
- ^ Hermitage.
- ^ Johnson 1997, p. 37.
- ^ Johnson 2006, p. 57, n. 40.
- ^ Johnson 2006, p. 55.
Works cited
- "Collection Highlights: Sappho and Phaon". The State Hermitage Museum. Archived from the original on 13 February 2009. Retrieved 13 February 2009.
- Johnson, Dorothy (1997). Jacques-Louis David: The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis. Getty Publications. ISBN 9780892362363.
- Johnson, Dorothy (2006). Jacques-Louis David: New Perspectives. University of Delaware Press. ISBN 9780874139303.
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- List of works
- Portrait of François Buron (1769)
- Jupiter and Antiope (1771)
- Minerva Fighting Mars (1771)
- Diana and Apollo Killing Niobe's Children (1772)
- The Death of Seneca (1773)
- Erasistratus Discovering the Cause of Antiochus' Disease (1774)
- The Funeral Games of Patroclus (1778)
- Saint Jerome Hears the Trumpet of the Last Judgment (1779)
- Saint Roch Interceding with the Virgin for the Plague-Stricken (1780)
- Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki (1780)
- Belisarius Begging for Alms (1781)
- Christ on the Cross (1782)
- Andromache Mourning Hector (1783)
- Portrait of Alphonse Leroy (1783)
- Oath of the Horatii (1784)
- The Vestal Virgin (c. 1787)
- The Death of Socrates (1787)
- Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his Wife (1788)
- The Loves of Paris and Helen (1788)
- The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (1789)
- Portrait of Madame Pastoret (1791)
- Lycurgus of Sparta (1791)
- Portrait of Philippe-Laurent de Joubert (c. 1792)
- Portrait of Madame Marie-Louise Trudaine (1792, unfinished)
- The Death of Marat (1793)
- The Last Moments of Michel Lepeletier (1793, lost)
- The Death of Young Bara (1794, incomplete)
- The Tennis Court Oath (1794, incomplete)
- Self-Portrait (1794)
- Portrait of Pierre Seriziat (1795)
- Psyche Abandoned (1795)
- The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799)
- Portrait of Madame Récamier (1800)
- Portrait of Cooper Penrose (1802)
- Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass (1800–1805)
- Portrait of Pope Pius VII (1805)
- Napoleon in Imperial Costume (1805)
- The Coronation of Napoleon (1807)
- Sappho and Phaon (1809)
- The Distribution of the Eagle Standards (1810)
- Portrait of comte Antoine Français de Nantes (1811)
- Napoleon in His Study (1812)
- Leonidas at Thermopylae (1814)
- Cupid and Psyche (1817)
- The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis (1818)
- The Anger of Achilles (1819)
- Mars Being Disarmed by Venus (1824)
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