Sappho und Alkaios

Alma-Tadema painted this in 1881, at the height of a Victorian craving to see the ancient world made solid and sunlit. The scene is the island of Lesbos in the late 7th century BC, where the poet Alcaeus plays a kithara, a large lyre, while Sappho leans in from the marble benches to listen, her friends around her. Alma-Tadema was fanatical about getting the archaeology right. He modelled the tiered seating on the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, then quietly swapped the real Athenian names cut into the stone for the names of Sappho's own circle. On the cushion by her arm rests a laurel wreath, ready for the performer.