Sappho à la colonne

A romanticized rendering of the ancient Greek poet Sappho standing with her proper right hand resting upon an Ionic column, with a scroll hanging down (in the original sculpture, the scroll contains Greek text from Sappho’s hymn to Aphrodite (fr.1)). In her left hand she holds the chelys-lyre, an archaic turtle-shell stringed instrument.

Jean-Jacques Pradier (called James) was a Swiss / French Neoclassical sculptor of the first half of the 19th century. Through public commission and private exhibition, his work quickly secured his position as one of the great sculptors of his day. From the façade of the Palais du Luxembourg to Napoleon’s tomb at the Place des Invalides, his work can be seen all over Paris.

Pradier was obsessed with the romanticized figure of Sappho that was prevalent in the 19th century — the ‘burning Sappho’ of Byron’s Isles of Greece — and he sculpted several versions of Sappho throughout his career. The Sappho à la colonne is the rarest of Pradier’s Sapphos available on the market. The original was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1848 (and praised in a review by Théophile Gautier), and was acquired by Queen Victoria for the Royal Collection (originally at Osborne House), where it remains — view in the Royal Collection.

A particularly fine work, emblematic of the highpoint of French academic sculpture.