Meleager with the Head of the Calydonian Boar - Barry, James (Irish painter, printmaker, and lithographer, 1741-1806, active in England) (The Tate Gallery, 1983)
On verso: another study of the head of Meleager. 'Following Winckelmann's suggestion that the statue in the Belvedere courtyard of Antinous, a deified favourite of the Emperor Hadrian, was in fact a representation of Meleager, the renowned hunter who slew the Calydonian boar, Barry based his conception on this famous work. His rendering, a free adaptation, corrects faults that he found in the original: 'The Meleager (commonly called the Antinous of the Belvedere) I often, as well as many others, thought had a little caricatura in the sway of the attitude. Upon very narrow inspection, I see it was occasioned by the restoring and putting of the figure together' (Works, I, p168). The menacing boar's head, on the other hand, is probably based on the rendering to be found in the Pighini Meleager. Although the artist has made a half-hearted attempt to sketch in a minimal landscape setting, his figure of Meleager appears frozen in time and space like the antique statue on which it is based.'(Pressly, 62)
Keywords: Art, Irish; Drawing, Irish; Meleager (Greek mythology) Art; Calydonian boar (Greek mythology); 18th century