
Charles Meynier (French, 1768–1832)
1798
A companion to the Apollo allegory, Charles Meynier's 'Calliope, Muse of Epic Poetry' (c. 1800) depicts the chief of the nine Muses seated with a scroll, her classical attributes of the laurel wreath and stylus at hand. Painted in Meynier's cool Davidian idiom, it forms part of an ambitious Neoclassical cycle of the muses now dispersed across American collections, including this canvas in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
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