1880
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery is a 1880 by Edgar Degas, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a blue dress stands still, looking at an ancient stone tomb inside a glass case. Behind her, another woman reads from a guidebook, seated on a bench. The tomb shows a smiling couple carved in stone, lying side by side. This is Mary Cassatt, an American painter in Paris, shown studying art just like she lived it. Degas painted her with respect, not as a model but as a fellow artist deep in thought. The Etruscan sculpture dates back to 500 BC, linking past and present. The Cleveland Museum of Art holds this quiet moment. (Word count: 98)
This print is one of two in which Edgar Degas depicted Mary Cassatt and her sister Lydia at the Musée du Louvre. In this iteration of the subject, Casatt gazes intently at an Etruscan tomb, about 500 BC, excavated at Cerveteri, the largest ancient necropolis in the Mediterranean. Cassatt is viewed from behind while the enigmatically smiling couple, lying on top of a sarcophagus and enclosed in a glass case, face the viewer. Cassatt confronts the sculpture directly while Lydia reads about it in a guidebook.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas on 19 July 1834 in Paris, Edgar Degas came from an affluent banking family with aristocratic roots and spent his childhood among the cultivated circles of the French capital.
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