Cymon and Iphigenia (painting)
| Cymon and Iphigenia | |
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| Artist | Frederic Leighton |
| Year | 1884 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 163 cm × 328 cm (64 in × 129 in) |
| Location | Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia |
Cymon and Iphigenia is an oil on canvas painting by Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton. The painting does not bear a date but was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1884. The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, purchased it at a Christie's auction in London in 1976.
According to a story published in 1897, Leighton spent six months searching throughout Europe for a model to match his imagined ideal of Iphigenia for his intended portrayal of Cymon and Iphigenia. He saw a young actress, Dorothy Dene, in a theatre in London and his search was over. Possessing a classical Greek style beauty, Dene had golden wavy hair with excellent skin texture and colouration on her face; she was taller than average with graceful arms and legs together with an “exquisitely moulded bust”. She appeared in several other of Leighton's works, including Greek Girls Playing Ball and Summer Moon. Lena, one of Dene's younger sisters, appears in the painting as the child slave. Other paintings by Leighton featuring Dene are: The Bath of Psyche, Clytie, Perseus and Andromeda, Solitude, The Return of Persephone and The Vestal.
The painting took eight months to complete; a succession of line drawings were done first as Leighton tried to capture the position he wanted for the central figure, around 56 – including several of foliage and other elements of the piece – of these are known to exist. The English art critic Peter Nahum describes the painting as "central among Leighton's later works", an opinion Mrs Russell Barrington considered was shared by Leighton. Leighton's painting Idyll dating from a few years earlier has some similar elements but lacks the complexities of Cymon and Iphigenia. The two compositions each highlight the difference between the fair complexion of a female with a dark skinned male; both feature a full-length woman reclining beneath a tree and similar lighting techniques are used.
The overall dimensions of the undated oil on canvas painting are 163 by 328 centimetres (64 by 129 in). Based on Giovanni Boccaccio'sThe Decameron, the painting depicts a scene from the first tale of day five; Iphigenia is sleeping in the woods and Cymon, a young nobleman, stands gazing at her beauty which fills him with inspiration. After seeing her, Cymon changes from a badly mannered lout to an ideal polymath. Nahum felt it "emphasised the transforming power of beauty." Boccaccio set the story in the springtime; Leighton preferred the ambience of a more autumnal feel. The artist was very precise about the mood he wanted to reflect by describing the specific setting of the time of day as "the most mysteriously beautiful in the whole twenty-four hours". He wished to capture the overall impression of drowsiness just before drifting to sleep especially on long hot days as night begins to fall. The painting is set when there is the "merest lip of the moon" showing on the horizon above the sea and the atmosphere is "haunted still with the flush of the after-glow from the sun already hidden in the west."
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