The Allegory of the Sorbonne
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
32 5/8 x 180 1/4 in. (82.9 x 457.8 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929
Accession Number
29.100.117
Tags
Art Historical Context
**The Allegory of thebonne** (1889) is a monumental oil-on-canvas masterpiece by Pierre Puvis de Channes, a leading French Symbolist painter renowned for his poetic, classical murals adorning public spaces. Measuring over 15 feet wide, this panoramic frieze was commissioned for the grand amphitheater of thebonne, the historic University of Paris, symbolizing the pursuit of knowledge in the late 19th century.vis's vision captures an idealized assembly of figures—men and women embodying the arts, sciences, and humanities—processioning in harmonious unity, evoking timeless wisdom amid France's Th...
About the Artist
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes · 1824–1898
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898) was a French painter who became the foremost muralist of nineteenth-century France and a crucial bridge between academic tradition and modernism. Born in Lyon to a prosperous family, he studied briefly with Henri Scheffer and Thomas Couture in Paris and traveled to Italy, where the frescoes of the Italian Renaissance made a lasting impression on his artistic v...