Artwork Page for Polyhymnia, Muse of Eloquence

Details / Information for Polyhymnia, Muse of Eloquence

Polyhymnia, Muse of Eloquence

1800

Charles Meynier

(French, 1768–1832)
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Culture
France, late 18th-early 19th century
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
Overall: 275 x 177 cm (108 1/4 x 69 11/16 in.)
Credit Line
Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2003.6.1
Public Domain
You can copy, modify, and distribute this work, all without asking permission. Learn more about CMA's Open Access Initiative.
Location
201 French Neoclassical Painting & Sculpture
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Did You Know?

Meynier was trained in a studio known by the students of Jacques-Louis David as the atelier of the "perruques" (wigs), a name given to royalists or conservatives of the period.

Description

Polymnia is one of the nine muses in Greek mythology and a patron of dancing or geometry. She is portrayed here standing in front of a bust of the Athenian orator Demosthenes. This painting belongs to a cycle of five works commissioned by businessman François Boyer-Fonfréde for his home in Toulouse.
Oil painting depicting Polyhymnia, a muse with light skin tone wearing a muted purple dress layered over with a gold-orange drape across her left shoulder as she holds both arms to our right while looking at us. A gold crown in her black hair holds a white veil billowing behind her, her mouth slightly open as her left foot steps forward. A chair sits in a marble niche behind her, a gold staff leaning against it, and a column rising above upon which the bust of a bearded man sits.

Polyhymnia, Muse of Eloquence

1800

Charles Meynier

(French, 1768–1832)
France, late 18th-early 19th century

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