‘The Three Statues of Aegina’, by Frederick Sandys (1832

The Three Statues of Aegina

Frederick Sandys

1861

Wood engraving by Joseph Swain

5 x 3¼ inches

Illustration for Once a Week, 26 October 1861, p.491.

This illustration for a poem by Walter Thornbury represents the moment when Pluto is taking Chiron to the Underworld. The sculptor is shown as a distinguished elderly man, surrounded by an aura; Pluto is in the process of placing his cloak around him; and Cerberus can be glimpsed in the bottom left [continued below].

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Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

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The sculpture of Minerva is glimpsed in the background (apparently copied from the figure of Britannia on contemporary pennies). None of this is obvious, and Swain’s uncharacteristically poor engraving, especially in the near-illegible inscription of Cerberus, makes the image difficult to decode. Its appearance in the pages of a popular magazine strongly suggests that the original middle-class audience would have known the story, though only a minority would have had a classic education in the manner prescribed by the British public school system. Stylistically, the composition can be linked to the neo-classical paintings of the 1860s by Frederick Leighton, although the morbid and disturbing tone is entirely the illustrator’s own.

Last modified 1 June 2013