Sappho and her influenceRobinson, David M. (David Moore)
History
Sappho and her influence
Robinson, David M. (David Moore)
Sappho -- Influence
After Roman days Sappho was often pictured and sculptured in various
ideal ways.[133] Space fails us to discuss the almost endless works
of later art influenced by her name and traditions; and it seems idle
to detain the reader with a detailed catalogue. But to leave no doubt
that Sappho has had a vast and powerful influence on art of all ages,
I may mention some of the more important. During the last sixty years
especially, sculpture has paid a frequent and international tribute to
her. Now she is represented as sad and pensive, now meditating suicide,
now about to make the fatal leap from the Leucadian rock as in Pietro
Magni’s Saffo (1866), now even as a corpse on the surface of the sea.
Magni’s statue (Pl. 22) was much admired during his lifetime and it
reminds one of the Roman stucco relief, since it likewise represents
Sappho, lyre in hand and with head wreathed, standing on the edge of
the rock. She is holding back her skirts with her left hand and looking
seriously at the waters below, with the intention of stepping off at
the next moment. In 1878 the illustrious Lombard sculptor, Francesco
Confalonieri, influenced it may be by the Vatican Agrippina, made a
seated statue which represents Sappho in profile with sad and bowed head,
clasping her hands on her left side, her lyre abandoned on the floor.
France did not approve of this statue because some years before Pradier
also had sculptured a draped and dreaming Sappho who was seated on the
Leucadian rock with bowed head and hands clasped about her raised crossed
left leg, her lyre lying neglected on the rock (Pl. 23). Pradier had also
sculptured a standing, draped Sappho with bowed head holding her lyre in
her left hand, and supporting her right on an Ionic column on which rest
the rolls of her divine poetry.
The great German sculptor Danneker, who was so fond of classical subjects
and was the sculptor of the famous Ariadne, chiselled a charming marble
statuette of Sappho (1796). The beautiful bas-relief in Greek style in
the Vienna Volksgarten, which R. Weyr sculptured for the Grillparzer
Monument, represents Sappho’s farewell. She stands in drapery like that
of the Erechtheum Caryatids. She is holding a lyre and kissing good-bye
to a girl friend who gives her a last embrace. A shepherd kneels nearby
and others in the background are recoiling in fear. She herself stands
at the edge of the steps in front of Apollo’s temple, and there is much
other Greek architecture in this relief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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