Ode XIX ❉ | Anacreon

Allegorical, Children, Fashion, Flowers, Genre: Children, Genre: Women, Motherhood, Mythology, Nudes, Paths

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 20.1 x 14.1 cm | 16.8 x 11.9 cm (spot-glued on four corners to support, with entire tissue gravure shown)
Support Dimensions: 29.7 x 25.0 cm Bristol paper leaf

❉ note to reader: letterpress attribution states ODE XIX although this may be in error. Rather, ODE XX is believed to be correct translated ode.

The following poem by Greek poet Anacreon (582 BC – 485 BC) accompanies this photograph in volume pagination:

     
ODE XIX.
  
One day the Muses twined the hands
Of baby Love with flowery bands,
And to celestial Beauty gave
The captive infant as her salve,
His mother comes with many a toy,
To ransom her beloved boy;
His mother sues, but all in vain,
He ne’er will leave his chains again.
Nay, should they take his chains away,
The little captive still would stay;
“If this,” he cries, “a bondage be,
Who could wish for liberty?”
    
Anacreon.


This image a variant of the Emma Justine Farnsworth photograph known as “Cupid”: reproduced: The American Amateur Photographer: November, 1893.