Le Avventure di Saffo (The Adventures of Sappho)

1784

Henry Tresham

Associated Names
Henry Tresham

Artist, Irish, 1751 - 1814

The image depicts a page with an illustration of an ancient-style profile portrait medallion, featuring the bust and head of a person with defined facial features facing left. The person has a nose, cheekbones, and chin, with hair styled in a classical Greek fashion, tied with a band. Above the portrait, the text "Le Avventure di SAFFO" is inscribed in a decorative font. Below the medallion, there are lines of smaller text in Italian. The background has an aged paper texture with scattered spots. The location is listed as "ROMA," and the date is in Roman numerals "MDCCLXXVIII," which translates to 1784.

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    bound volume with engraved, etched, and aquatinted title page, engraved introduction, and eighteen etching and aquatints printed in brown, black, light green, and gray on laid paper

  • Credit Line

    William B. O'Neal Fund

  • Dimensions

    book (volume closed): 44 × 33.5 × 0.9 cm (17 5/16 × 13 3/16 × 3/8 in.)

  • Accession Number

    2016.171.1.1-20

Associated Artworks

See all 20 artworks

Title Page

Henry Tresham

1784

Text Page

Henry Tresham

1784

Saffo si accende per Faone (Saffo Ignited by Phaon)

Henry Tresham

1784

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Visconti Collection? (see Inscriptions). (Hill-Stone Incorporated, Dartmouth, MA); purchased 2016 by NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2021

  • Aquatint: From Its Origins to Goya, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2021 - 2022.

Bibliography

1979

  • Pressly, Nancy. The Fuseli Circle in Rome. New Haven, 1979:

Inscriptions

in brown ink on first free endpaper: A: E: C: Visconti / [1?]: 8.; in brown ink across top of titlepage: Tresham

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