The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of September 15, 2026

A vertically oriented oil painting in muted colors depicts the god Apollo and muse Urania with light skin and wavy, blonde hair. Apollo stands center, holding a golden lyre while raising a laurel wreath, his eyes following it. A red cloak drapes his muscular frame. To our right, Urania, in blue garments, leans on a celestial orb, gazing up. Two white swans swim in the foreground water as gray-blue clouds collect in the background.

Apollo, God of Light, Eloquence, Poetry, and the Fine Arts with Urania, Muse of Astronomy

1798

Charles Meynier

(French, 1768–1832)
France, late 18th century
oil on canvas
Overall: 275 x 235 cm (108 1/4 x 92 1/2 in.)
Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2003.6.3
Location: 219 19th Century European

Did You Know?

Urania leans on a starry orb, indicating her role as the muse of astronomy.

Description

A recipient of the Grand Prix de Rome in 1789, Charles Meynier became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1815 and painted large ceiling decorations at the Louvre and numerous pictures glorifying the Napoleonic legend. Erato, Muse of Lyrical Poetry belongs to a cycle of five paintings executed to fulfill a commission from businessman François Boyer-Fonfréde. They were intended to decorate his home in his native Toulouse and constitute a rare instance of a complete cycle of major paintings that remain intact rather than being split up and separately dispersed.
  • Before entering the collection, this entire suite of five monumental paintings by Charles Meynier had numerous conservation issues, including pronounced discolored varnish, years of accumulated grime, and canvases that were detaching from their stretchers, creating large buckles along the edges. The CMA designed a four-year-long comprehensive conservation campaign to address these concerns, which involved removing the grime, reducing the discolored varnish, flattening buckles and undulations in the canvas, followed by inpainting mainly to compensate for pronounced traction cracking in the original paint layers. Traction cracking occurs when the top layers of paint dry faster than the underlayers, creating breaks in the top layers, revealing the underlying preparatory layers that were not intended to be seen. Horizontal cracking at regular intervals is present in each painting and is likely caused by rolling the canvases to transport them to the Castella chateau in Wallenreid, Switzerland, where the paintings remained until the CMA purchased them in 2003. The oversized format for Apollo, God of Light, Eloquence, Poetry, and the Fine Arts with Urania, Muse of Astronomy, comprises two canvases that are vertically seamed together (right of the central axis) to form one large canvas. The exquisitely carved gold leaf frames are original to the paintings.
  • In 1819, Nicolas-Antoine de Castella, general of the Swiss regiments in France, purchased the paintings and placed them in his Castle of Wallenreid, Switzerland.
    direct descendants
    Pierre de Castella, Mannaz, Switzerland
    2003-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Bellenger, Sylvain. "Magnificent Muses", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 44 no. 01, January 2004 Mentioned & reproduced: p. 4 archive.org
    Bracken Sparks, Amy, "Disappearing Act." Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 48 no. 5 (May/June 2008): 10-12. Reproduced: p. 12 archive.org
  • {{cite web|title=Apollo, God of Light, Eloquence, Poetry, and the Fine Arts with Urania, Muse of Astronomy|url=false|author=Charles Meynier|year=1798|access-date=15 September 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2003.6.3