Bonhams Old Master Paintings Sale
LONDON - Sappho inspired by Cupid (picture above) is a sensual work by the French 17th century Master, Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
The painting will be sold at Bonhams Old Master Paintings Sale in London, on 9 July. Its value is ranged between 800.000 £ - 1.200.000£.
Also known as the Portanova Sappho, it was created around 1780, when the painter moved away from the Rococo style with which he had established his early reputation and started to experiment with Neoclassicism.
Sappho inspired by Cupid became a hit sensation among collectors, because Fragonard repeated the composition many times and painted other allegorical works with a romantic theme – The Invocation to Love, The Fountain of Love and The Sacrifice of the Rose, for example, - again, in several versions.
The Bonhams version sale is regarded as the highest in quality! Sappho's poetry celebrated beauty through love and inspired Fragonard’s painting to depicts the figure of Cupid in his traditional guise of a chubby young boy, embracing and inspiring the classically perfect, but recognisably human, figure of the poetess.
The modern identification of Sappho as a writer of specifically lesbian poetry would almost certainly have been unfamiliar to Fragonard - the terms lesbian and Sapphic were not coined until the last third of the 19th century - and there is no suggestion of this in the image.
In December 2013, Bonhams set a new world record price for a painting by Fragonard, when it sold The Portrait of François-Henri d’Harcourt for 17.1 million £.
