- Artist
- Alexandre Cabanel
- Year
- c. 1857
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 62.2 × 68 cm
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.