A Reading from Homer Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema 1885

A Reading from Homer
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema 1885
From the collection of
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Here, a young poet crowned with a laurel wreath reads from Homer to an audience dressed for a festival. The setting is probably Greece toward the end of the seventh century BCE. The Greek letters in the upper right indicate that the place is dedicated to the poet.
Through attention to details such as architecture and dress, Alma-Tadema evokes scenes of everyday life in ancient Greece and Rome. However, his pictures are rarely entirely archaeologically accurate. For example, while he accurately rendered the ancient musical instrument on the left, a cithara, he also included a type of rose that did not exist before the nineteenth century.
Details
Title: A Reading from Homer
Date: 1885
Physical Dimensions: w72.25 x h36.14 in (Overall)
Artist/Maker: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, English (born Netherlands), 1836 - 1912
Provenance: The George W. Elkins Collection, 1924
Type: Paintings
Rights: © 2014 Philadelphia Museum of Art. All rights reserved.
External Link: Philadelphia Museum of Art http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102964.html
Medium: Oil on canvas

Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia, United States

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Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Jan 8, 1836 - Jun 25, 1912

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, OM, RA was a Frisian painter of special British denizenship.
Born in Dronrijp, the Netherlands, and trained at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Belgium, he settled in England in 1870 and spent the rest of his life there. A classical-subject painter, he became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, with languorous figures set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean Sea and sky.
Though admired during his lifetime for his draftsmanship and depictions of Classical antiquity, his work fell into disrepute after his death, and only since the 1960s has it been re-evaluated for its importance within nineteenth-century English art.
http://hisour.com/art-medium/paintings/a-reading-from-homer-sir-lawrence-alma-tadema-1885/