Sappho and her influenceRobinson, David M. (David Moore)
History
Sappho and her influence
Robinson, David M. (David Moore)
Sappho -- Influence
The oldest possible representation of Sappho with which I am acquainted
is an archaic terra-cotta relief from Melos in the British Museum.[108]
It dates only a few years after Sappho’s time, and though not inscribed
it may represent Sappho and Alcaeus. Sappho appears as a slender lady
of average height (not of short stature as Ovid says), dressed in a long
Ionic woven tunic and wearing sandals. She sits with lyre in left hand
and plectrum in right, and the bearded Alcaeus stands before her with
bowl in left and extending his right hand. He seems to be expressing
with a smile his admiration of her new poetry, so different from his
own archaic measure. There is probably no reference, as in the case of
the Munich vase from Sicily,[109] to the famous lines which we have
quoted (p. 27). On this vase the names Sapho (so spelt) and Alcaeus are
painted beside the tall and stately figures who appear with lyre and
plectrum. Sappho seems to be rebuking with almost a pouting expression
her fellow-townsman Alcaeus, who bows his head as she speaks to him
the famous lines. This pictorial translation of her verses and other
representations show her great popularity in Athens in the fifth century
B.C. This Munich _psycter_ or cooling mixing-bowl (Pl. 12) for wine may
date as late as 460 B.C. and has been attributed to a fictitious lady
painter of the Free Style by Hauser, but his attribution has not been
generally accepted.[110] Furtwängler was probably right in connecting the
vase with the Brygus painter. My learned friend, the great Oxford expert
on vases, Mr. J. D. Beazley writes me that very likely it was not by the
Brygus painter himself, but surely in his manner. On an earlier vase,
now in the Czartoryski collection in Cracow (Pl. 13), dating from the
end of the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century B.C., according
to Beazley a vase roughly related in style to the Nicoxenus painter, a
contemporary of Euthymides, we have the earliest certain representation
of Sappho.[111] She is a tall, draped figure with smiling countenance,
walking to right and holding a seven-stringed lyre in her left hand and a
plectrum in her right. She appears on only this one black-figured vase,
which would seem to indicate that she did not become popular in Athens
till long after her death, when red-figured vases were the vogue. The
story of Solon adds testimony to the same effect, and probably a _corpus_
or collection of her writings used by the later Alexandrian editions was
in the book-stalls at Athens even in the last years of the sixth century.
Otherwise it is difficult to account for her frequent portrayal on Attic
red-figured vases. The lost Middleton vase,[112] (Pl. 14), probably of
the South Italian (Lucanian) Style, shows Sappho, whose name is now thus
spelt, seated on a four-legged stool while a nude winged Eros hastens
towards her with a wreath. The painter probably knew the poems of Sappho
which pictured Eros as bitter-sweet, and Sappho’s other word-pictures of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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