The symposium described in the Symposion of Plato: the drunken Alcibiades enters on the left. Etching by P. Testa, 1648.

  • Testa, Pietro, 1611-1650.
Date:
1648
Reference:
33536i
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Description

Men engaged in discussion within a classical interior, with musicians and jesters in the background. The subject is the Symposium described in Plato's dialogue of that name

Publication/Creation

[Rome?] : [publisher not identified], 1648.

Physical description

1 print : etching ; image and border 26.4 x 38.6 cm

Lettering

Vina, dapes onerant animos, sapientia nutrit. Illustrissimo atque ornatiss. D.D. Fabritio Cellestio equiti S. Stephani. In symposio de amore disserentes te virtutis amantem, vocant convivam. Ars mea muta est; tuas recitabit laudes, sive Socrates, sive Alcibiade. Vale T.D. additissimus Petrus Testa 1648

References note

E. Cropper, Pietro Testa 1612-1650 prints and drawings, Aldershot 1988, pp. 245-249, no. 114
Adam Bartsch, Le peintre graveur, Vienna 1820, vol. XX, p. 220, no. 18, as the seven sages of Greece ("18. Les sept Sages de la Grèce discourant ensemble à table. On lit à gauche, à mi-hauteur de l’estampe: Vina, dapes onerant animos, sapientia nutrit, et en bas : Illustrissimo atque ornatiss. … additissimus Petrus Testa. 1648. Largeur-: 14 p. 1 lign. Hauteur : 9 p. 8 lign.")
E. McGrath, "The drunken Alcibiades", Rubens's picture of Plato's symposium, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol 46 (1983) pp. 228-35

Reference

Wellcome Collection 33536i

Reproduction note

The preparatory drawing is in the Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des dessins, Paris, 1902

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