Taís

Reynolds showed this at the Royal Academy in 1781, and London audiences would have recognised both the ancient story and the model. Thaïs was the Greek courtesan who, according to legend, egged Alexander the Great and his drunken officers into burning the palace of Persepolis after they conquered Persia. Reynolds took the scene from Dryden's poem Alexander's Feast, and had it acted out by Emily Warren, one of the most famous courtesans in the city, whom he shows striding forward with a torch to set the fire. The double joke of a real London courtesan playing the courtesan who burned an empire was not lost on anyone. Her patron, who commissioned the picture, was slow to pay and soon sold it on.