Lot Essay
Andromeda was the daughter of Cassiope, Queen of Ethiopia, who had angered the sea god, Neptune. He took his revenge by ordering that her daughter should be chained to a rock and devoured by a sea monster. Andromeda was rescued by Perscus, the son of Jupiter by Dantaë, who, descending on his horse Pegasus, faced the monster with the head of the Gorgon Medusa which turned everything that saw it to stone.
Told by Ovid in his Heroides, the story has inspired countless artists, and it fascinated the Victorians. Stanhope himself treated it again in a rare attempt at sculpture, his 'alto-relievo' of Andromeda' appearing at the Royal Academy in 1872. It was also attempted by his master G.F. Watts and by his friend and mentor Burne-Jones, who began a never-completed series of paintings on the theme in 1875. E.J. Poynter illustrated the subject in one of the large paintings he executed for the billiard room at Wortley Hall, Yorkshire, in the 1870s, and Leighton did so in a dramatic painting of 1891 (Liverpool) and a canvas that he was still working on at his death (Leicester). There are poems based on the legend by Morris and Browning, and two exponents of the 'New Sculpture' - Alfred Gilbert and F.W. Pomeroy - tackled it respectively in 1882 and 1898. They were inspired by the celebrated bronze by Benvenuto Cellini in Florence, which would also have been well known to Stanhope.
In psychology and physical detail the painting resembles the work of Stanhope's niece Evelyn De Morgan, who often stayed with her uncle at Bellosguardo and shared his sources of inspiration. Interestingly enough in view of his 'alto-relievo', she too touched on the theme in an usual venture into sculpture, executing an astonishing over-life-size torso of Medusa in Rome in the late 1870s (private collection; repr. W. Shaw Sparrow, 'The Art of Mrs William De Morgan', Studio, 19, 1900, p.232).
Told by Ovid in his Heroides, the story has inspired countless artists, and it fascinated the Victorians. Stanhope himself treated it again in a rare attempt at sculpture, his 'alto-relievo' of Andromeda' appearing at the Royal Academy in 1872. It was also attempted by his master G.F. Watts and by his friend and mentor Burne-Jones, who began a never-completed series of paintings on the theme in 1875. E.J. Poynter illustrated the subject in one of the large paintings he executed for the billiard room at Wortley Hall, Yorkshire, in the 1870s, and Leighton did so in a dramatic painting of 1891 (Liverpool) and a canvas that he was still working on at his death (Leicester). There are poems based on the legend by Morris and Browning, and two exponents of the 'New Sculpture' - Alfred Gilbert and F.W. Pomeroy - tackled it respectively in 1882 and 1898. They were inspired by the celebrated bronze by Benvenuto Cellini in Florence, which would also have been well known to Stanhope.
In psychology and physical detail the painting resembles the work of Stanhope's niece Evelyn De Morgan, who often stayed with her uncle at Bellosguardo and shared his sources of inspiration. Interestingly enough in view of his 'alto-relievo', she too touched on the theme in an usual venture into sculpture, executing an astonishing over-life-size torso of Medusa in Rome in the late 1870s (private collection; repr. W. Shaw Sparrow, 'The Art of Mrs William De Morgan', Studio, 19, 1900, p.232).