Hero – Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1899

“Hero”, heliogravure produced in 1899 by Arthur Tooth & Sons after the painting of the same title from 1898 (Opus CCCLII) by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Signed in pencil by Alma-Tadema at lower left. Contemporary hand-colouring. Dimensions 37 × 23.5 cm.

Hero is inspired by the Greek love story of Hero and Leander. Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite and lived in a tower at Sestos, on the European shore of the Hellespont. As a priestess she was required to remain unmarried, but naturally, she fell in love all the same. Leander lived in Abydos, on the opposite side of the strait. They met in secret. Every night Leander swam across the Hellespont (about 1,300 metres) to visit her, guided by the light of a lamp that Hero kept burning for him at the top of her tower.

Naturally, this could not end well: “such pleasures are too exquisite to last.” A storm blows up: “The full-fledg’d whirlwinds their hoarse voices try, / And drive the clouds, and bluster thro’ the sky. / The mounting waves, that peaceful crept before, / Boil into rage, and tumble to the shore.” The wind extinguishes the lamp and Leander does not survive: “At once the torch down by the winds was tost, / And with its flame, his life and love were lost.” His lifeless body is washed ashore beneath Hero’s tower. “Then darting headlong with a furious leap / From the high tow’r she plung’d into the deep.”

The tragic love story was already known in antiquity and was told, among others, by Ovid and later at length by the Greek poet Musaeus.

For his depiction Alma-Tadema chose a precise moment from the story. Dawn breaks after the stormy night, but Leander has not appeared. Hero stands alone at the foot of the marble steps of the tower, gazing out over the still turbulent Hellespont in the hope that her lover has lost his way in the darkness. Musaeus describes the moment: “The barren beach and seas she round survey’d, / And hop’d her lover in the dark had stray’d.” Only shortly afterwards does Hero discover Leander’s lifeless body on the shore, but Alma-Tadema leaves the dramatic dénouement outside the picture. The restless waves and heavy sky nevertheless lend the scene an ominous undertone: the viewer, after all, knows the fate awaiting Hero and Leander.

Price: Euro 2.150,-
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