Description
Inscriptions on painting: "Isola di Egina and Tempio di Minerva / Isola di Egina in [?]". Mounted with two printed excerpts, one cut from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1818) by Lord Byron, Canto IV, Stanza XLIV: “I traced the path of him,/ The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind,/ The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim/ The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,/ Came Megara before me, and behind/ AEgina lay, Piraeus on the right,/ And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined/ Along the prow, and saw all these unite/ In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight:”. The second excerpt from John Hobhouse’s notes to Canto IV: “The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, describes as it then was, and now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and land in different journeys and voyages. ‘On my return from Asia as I was sailing from Ægina towards Megara I began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around me: AEgina was behind, Megara before me; Piraeus on the right, Corinth on the left; all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this sight, I could not but think presently within myself, Alas! how do we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die or be killed whose life is yet so short, when the carcases of so many noble cities lie here exposed before me in one view.’” From: "Album No.5, Carelli's Sketches, 1839, Sicily & the East".
Image Licence
All Rights Reserved
Image Credit
image © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.
Location
Egina, Greece
Country
Greece
Tags
Category
Landscapes & Seascapes
