The Syracusan Bride leading Wild Animals in Procession to the Temple of Diana

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Syracusan Bride, 1866

The Syracusan Bride Leading Wild Animals in Procession to the Temple of Diana, also known as A Syracusan Bride Leading Wild Beasts in Procession to the Altar of Diana, is an oil painting by the English artist Frederic Leighton, which was first exhibited, to a favourable reception, at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1866.

Description

Syracusan Bride (detail)

A terrace of white marble, whose line is reflected and repeated by the line of white clouds in the sky, affords the setting for the figures of the procession.[1] The Syracusan bride leads a lioness, and these are followed by a train of maidens and wild beasts.[1] The procession is seen approaching the door of the temple, and a statue of Diana.[1]

Background

The subject was suggested by a passage in the second Idyll of Theocritus.[2] "One day came Anaxo daughter of Eubulus our way, came a-basket-bearing in procession to the temple of Artemis, with a ring of many beasts about her, a lioness one."[3] Sketches for portions of the picture and the squared tracing for the complete design can be seen in the Leighton House Collection.[2] The full-length portrait of Mrs. James Guthrie was exhibited the same year as this second processional picture, which appeared on the walls of the Academy eleven years after the Cimabue's Madonna.[2] The head of the central figure, the Bride, Leighton painted from Mrs. Guthrie.[2]

Appraisal

The Syracusan Bride was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1866 and in the Paris International Exhibition in 1868.[4] Russell Barrington, writing in 1906, praised the "richness of arrangement combined with the fair aerial atmosphere appropriate to a Grecian scene".[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c Staley 1906, p. 24.
  2. ^ a b c d Barrington 1906, ii. p. 384.
  3. ^ Edmonds 1912, p. 31.
  4. ^ Barrington 1906, ii. pp. 124–125.
  5. ^ Barrington 1906, ii. p. 10.

Sources

Attribution: Public Domain This article incorporates text from these sources, which are in the public domain.

  • Barrington, Russell (1906). The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Baron Leighton of Stretton. Vol. 2. London: George Allen, Ruskin House. pp. 10–11, 15, 124–125, 191, 384.
  • Edmonds, J. M. (1912). The Greek Bucolic Poets: Theocritus, Bion, Moschus. (Loeb Classical Library). London: William Heinemann; New York: The Macmillan Co. p. 31.
  • Staley, Edgcumbe (1906). Lord Leighton of Stretton. London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 70–71, 219–220.

Further reading

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