Sappho and alcaeus alma-tadema biography

In 1870, the Dutch-born, Belgian-trained artist Alma-Tadema moved to London, where he funnen a ready market among the wealthy middle classes for paintings re-creating scenes of domestic life in imperial långnovell times. In this work, however, he turns to early Greece to illustrate a övergång 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 verisimilitud, 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.

Inscription

Provenance

William T. Walters, Baltimore, after 1881, bygd purchase [Deschamps as agent]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1894, by inhe

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File:Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, RA, OM - Sappho and Alcaeus - Walters 37159.jpg

  Artist

(1836–1912)
	Alternative names	Lawrence Alma Tadema, Lourens Alma Tadema, Laurens Alma Tadema
	Description	Dutch-British painter, drawer, etcher and illustrator
	Date of birth/death	8 January 1836	25 June 1912
	Location of birth/death	Dronryp	Wiesbaden
	Work period	1851-1912
	Work location	Antwerp (1852-1865), Leeuwarden (1855), Cologne (1861), Pompeii (1863-1864), Paris (1864), City of Brussels (1865-1870), London (1868, 1870-1912), Egypt (1902-1903)
	Authority file

artist QS:P170,Q240526

Title

Sappho and Alcaeus

Object typepainting Genrehistory painting Description

English: 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-creatin

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Sappho and Alcaeus

1881 painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Sappho and Alcaeus is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch-British artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema, from 1881. It is held by the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore.^[1]

Description

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The painting measures 66 by 122 centimetres (26 in × 48 in). It depicts a concert in the late 7th century BC, with the poet Alcaeus of Mytilene playing the kithara. In the audience is fellow Lesbos poet Sappho, accompanied by several of her female friends. Sappho is paying close attention to the performance, resting her arm on a cushion which bears a laurel wreath, presumably intended for the performer. The painting illustrates a passage by the poet Hermesianax, recorded by Athenaeus in his Deipnosophistae ("The Philosophers' Banquet"), book 13, page 598.

The location, with tiers of white marble seating, is based on the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, but Alma-Tadema replaced the original inscribed names of A