Lachrymae

Lachrymae, painted by Frederic Leighton in oil on canvas in 1895, shows a woman in black leaning against a Doric column. Its subject is mourning and death, and its Latin title, meaning 'tears', states this openly. The surrounding symbols are traditional: cypress trees in the background and a withered wreath of cypress leaves at the foot of the column, which some interpreters take to be a funerary monument. The tabernacle-shaped frame suggests a temple doorway. Greek pottery scattered through the scene points to the classical antiquity that fascinated Leighton, a British painter often treated as a neoclassicist and, at times, linked with the Pre-Raphaelites. The work has been compared with Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon, an earlier painting by the artist. The model is identified as Mary Loyd, who also posed for Flaming June.

Painter

Frederic Leighton

Date

1895

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

158 × 63 cm

Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Movement

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, academic art

Depicts

grief, wreath, Cupressus, sadness, Greek vases, woman, evening

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