Young Spartans Exercising

Young Spartans Exercising is one of Edgar Degas's earliest oil paintings, begun in 1860 and reworked by the artist over the following years without ever being finished. The scene brings together two groups of adolescents: on the left, five girls who seem to taunt or beckon, and on the right, five boys, all of them nude. In the background, clothed women and a man, identified as the mothers of the children and as Lycurgus, look on. The mountain that dominates the landscape is Mount Taygetus, linked in ancient accounts to the practice of abandoning children deemed unfit, and the city of Sparta rises behind the onlookers.

What makes the picture especially revealing is how much Degas changed along the way. X-rays taken in the early twenty-first century showed that he altered the positions of the youths, their faces and even their number, which left four women in the foreground with ten legs between them. Critics have focused above all on the faces: instead of the handsome classical Greek ideal, the young people take on an urban, modern appearance. The French art historian André Lemoisne was the first to notice this, comparing them to the street children of Montmartre, and later critics have largely agreed, seeing an attempt to bring the subject up to date.

A second full-scale version, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, is far less finished. It has a different background, with a more detailed landscape and a large architectural structure, and an extra boy on the right, which allows us to follow the painter's decisions.

As for meaning, the work was long read as a contest between young men and women, but in 1985 Carol Salus proposed that it shows Spartan courtship rites. Linda Nochlin challenged this the following year, arguing for a range of possible readings. Christopher Riopelle, curator at the National Gallery, observed in 2004 that the painting begins as a traditional history picture and ends as something far more enigmatic.

Painter

Edgar Degas

Date

1860

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

110 × 155 cm

Museum

National Gallery, London

Genre

history painting

Depicts

nudity, adolescence, teenager, nipple, Lycurgus of Sparta, boy, girl, clothed female, naked male

Share:FacebookWhatsApp