#mountaintop

[cdx1016]

Good Morning from 1,530 feet up! Cadillac Mountain Sunrise 4:48-5:20am

(viacarad1016)

[artemlegere]

Sappho Playing the Lyre

Artist: Léopold Burthe (French, 1823–1860)

Date: 1849

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne, Carcassonne, France

Sappho

Called the Tenth Muse by Plato, Sappho was a prolific poet of ancient Greece. She innovated the form of poetry through her first-person narration (instead of writing from the vantage point of the gods) and by refining the lyric meter. The details of Sappho’s life have been obscured by legend and mythology, and the best source of information is the Suidas, a Greek lexicon compiled in the 10th century.

Sappho was born on Lesbos to a noble family. She lived most of her life in the city of Mytilene, with the exception of her family’s brief exile in Sicily shortly after 600 B.C.E. She married a wealthy man in Mytilene, and they had a daughter names Cleis. Sappho also headed a thiasos, or an academy of unmarried women. As was the custom at the time, wealthy families sent their daughters to live at these schools where they were taught proper social graces, composition, singing, and poetry recitation. Much of Sappho’s poetry was composed in this community, and she used many of her students as subjects.

Perhaps Sappho’s most famous work is her “Ode to Aphrodite”:

Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind, child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you do not break with hard pains, O lady, my heart

but come here if ever before you caught my voice far off and listening left your father’s golden house and came,

yoking your car. And fine birds brought you, quick sparrows over the black earth whipping their wings down the sky through midair -

they arrive. But you, O blessed one, smiled in your deathless face and asked what (now again) I have suffered and why (now again) I am calling out

and what I want to happen most of all in my crazy heart. Whom should I persuade (now again) to lead you back into her love? Who, O Sappho, is wronging you?

For if she flees, soon she will pursue. If she refuses gifts, rather will she give them. If she does not love, soon she will love even unwilling.

Come to me now: loose me from hard care and all my heart longs to accomplish, accomplish. You be my ally.

(Carson, If Not, Winter, 2–5)

[oracle-fae]

x

[allegorypaintings]

Time Unveiling Truth

Artist: Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Italian, 1708–1787)

Date: 1740-1745

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States

[artandthebible]

Christ Escapes the Pharisees

Artist: Johann Friedrich Overbeck (German, 1789-1869)

Date: 1866

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Belgium

"Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp." (John 10:39)

[danskjavlarna]

Source details and larger version.

I've encountered quite a few vintage human giants in the course of my research.

[depressionlibrary]

Above Finestrat and Embalse del Amadorio - Spain

[my-name-is-not-victoria]

Early Morning Before the Hike

6/20/2025

[inspirehorizon]

A gentle crest in heaven's vest

[royalty-nobility]

Portrait of Princess Karoline von Liechtenstein (1768–1831), née Countess von Manderscheidt-Blankenheim, as Iris

Artist: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755–1842)

Date: 1793

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz–Vienna

Description

The great French portrait painter Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun stopped in Vienna during the extensive travels she undertook in 1793–94. Here, in the capital of the Habsburg Monarchy and home to its rulers, she was immediately inundated with portrait commissions. For the Liechtenstein family she painted two very large portraits for the palace on Herrengasse. With her portrait of Karoline von Liechtenstein (1768–1831), the wife of Prince Alois I, and of his sisters Maria Josepha Hermenegilde Esterházy (1768–1845), married since 1783 to Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy, Vigée-Lebrun delivered two masterly testaments to the outstanding abilities that by this date had already assured her of broad international recognition. Vigée-Lebrun informs the portrait with mythological content, showing Karoline von Liechtenstein as the goddess Iris.

[mythologypaintings]

Zeus with Hera Expelling Hephaestus (previously called Zeus with Cybele Expelling Chronos)

Artist: Gaetano Gandolfi (Italian, 1734-1802)

Date: 1761-1769

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Trust Collections, London, England

Description

A naked Zeus, with eagle and thunderbolt with his left foot on the back of a naked boy, Zeus's right hand holds the hand of a goddess, dressed in a plain white dress; putti hold the leg of the falling male figure. This is, as related in Homer's Iliad (1.590) the expulsion of Hephaestus (Vulcan) by Zeus (Jupiter) accompanied by Hera (Juno), gesturing to three gold crowns being held up by putti, whom her son was trying to stop her quarreling with the god.

[cdx1016]

SunRISE in Acadia National Park, Maine (viacarad1016)

4:00-5:00am Thursday June 26

[artemlegere]

Alkyone's Farewell Greeting to her Departing Husband

Artist: Christopher Wilhelm Eckersberg (Danish, 1783–1853)

Date: 1813

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: SMK - Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark

Description

Alcyone's Farewell to her Husband. From Ovid's Metamorphoses, Song XI

[rosalie-art]

Quiet pencil and digital

[andreadarcyart]

#huevember day 6: pink

The study for today should have been purple, not pink but I'm afraid I mucked it up 😅 I think I was just really excited to paint the colour pink again 🤣💖

[artandthebible]

Risen Christ

Artist: Francesco Napoletano (Italian, 1470-1501)

Date: c. 1500

Medium: Oil on wood

Collection: The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, United States

Description

As his name indicates, Francesco Napoletano was born in Naples, but he became one of the early followers of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan around 1490. Though this work shows elements derived from Leonardo’s style, especially the shading of Christ’s torso, the lone figure of the risen Christ was likely inspired by Venetian examples. This painting was probably made for a church in Venice, toward the end of Francesco’s life.