Young Spartans Exercising
| Young Spartans Exercising | |
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| Artist | Edgar Degas |
| Year | about 1860 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 109.5 cm × 155 cm (43.1 in × 61 in) |
| Location | The National Gallery, London |
Young Spartans Exercising, also known as Young Spartans and also as Young Spartan Girls Challenging Boys, is an early oil on canvas painting by French impressionist artist Edgar Degas. The work depicts two groups of male and female Spartan youth exercising and challenging each other in some way. The work is now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in London.
The painting depicts as its subject matter two groups of older children, four girls and five boys, with the girls apparently taunting or beckoning the boys. The girls are positioned to the left of the painting, the boys to the right, while in-between the two groups in the background appear a third group watching them; their appearance striking as they are fully dressed while the youth in the foreground stand naked or topless. Behind the onlookers, identified as Lycurgus and the mothers of the children, lies the city of Sparta, dominated by Mount Taygetus, from which the bodies of the society's "unfit" children were supposedly thrown into a ravine, to die from trauma or exposure.
The painting was begun in 1860 with Degas returning to the canvas to rework the piece over the following years, though it remained unfinished upon the artist's death. X-rays taken of the work during the early 21st century have revealed that Degas changed the positioning of the youths, their faces, and even their number; this last change resulted in the strange image of the four women in the foreground having ten legs among them. Degas' revisitation of the faces of the young people is often mentioned in art criticism, as it is believed the artist changed the features of the youths from the classic handsome Greek ideal, to a more urban modernistic look. The French art historian André Lemoisne, was first to note on this fact, remarking that the subjects had a contemporary Parisian look, more akin to the "gamins of Montmartre". More recent critics agree with Lemoisne, believing Degas was attempting to "update" his painting.
A second full-scale version of the painting exists, held by the Art Institute of Chicago. This version is much less finished, but it shows a vastly different background, with a more detailed landscape and a large architectural structure, around which the characters in the background are resting. The work also shows how Degas changed the number of foreground figures with an additional boy on the right of the painting.
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