Amphion and Zethus Delivering their Mother Antiope from the Fury of Dirce and Lycus
John Flaxman (English, 1755-1826)
1789
- Medium
- Pen and gray ink and brush and gray wash, over graphite, on gray laid paper, laid down on ivory wove paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- Primary support: 16.1 × 29.2 cm (6 3/8 × 11 1/2 in.); Secondary support: 23.3 × 35.7 cm (9 3/16 × 14 1/16 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
A British sculptor and draughtsman who created figural designs for famed ceramicist Josiah Wedgwood, John Flaxman had a taste for the Neoclassical, which led him to Rome in 1787. While in the Eternal City, Flaxman produced this study for a nine-by-five-foot bas-relief using several references from ancient Roman sculpture. The drawing exhibits Flaxman’s signature elegance in figural outlines. However, Flaxman felt the project was inadequate to establish his reputation as a sculptor, so he abandoned it and later reused two of the figures from this drawing in a different context.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
