Classical Frieze with Head of Demosthenes
18th century
Medium
Graphite, brush and brown and gray wash
Dimensions
sheet: 3 3/4 x 9 3/4 in. (9.6 x 24.7 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1953
Accession Number
53.532.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate 18th-century drawing created anonymously by a French artist, captures a classical frieze adorned with the iconic profile head of Demosthenes, renowned ancient Greek orator and statesman Rendered on a modest sheet measuring just 3 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches, it the era's fascination with antiquity during the Enlightenment and emerging Neoclassicism. French artists of the time often studied Greco-Roman sculptures and architecture, sketching them to revive classical ideals of heroism, rhetoric, and civic virtue—qualities embodied by Demosthenes, whose speeches against Philip II of Macedon i...
About the Artist
Anonymous, French, 18th century · 1700–1800
The artist known as Anonymous, French, 18th century, represents a collective of unidentified talents active roughly between 1700 and 1800, a period of profound artistic evolution in France from the opulent Rococo to the austere dawn of Neoclassicism and Revolutionary fervor. Little is documented about their personal training or mentors, as their anonymity obscures individual biographies, though th...