- Artist
- Alexandre Cabanel
- Year
- c. 1857
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Unframed: 62.2 x 68 cm (24 1/2 x 26 3/4 in.)
Public Domain
Cleveland Museum of Art
Two figures from a medieval legend meet in a landscape suffused with warm light. Cabanel, a dominant figure in the French Academic tradition, won the Prix de Rome in 1845 and became one of Napoleon III’s favored painters. His mythological and literary subjects, polished to a high finish, represented the conservative establishment against which the Impressionists would rebel. This early work shows Cabanel’s debt to the Renaissance masters he studied during his years in Italy.