Cleveland Museum of Art

Aglaida and Boniface

Alexandre Cabanel

Date

c. 1857

Medium

oil on canvas

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The French painter Alexandre Cabanel was a favorite of Emperor Napoleon III and a leader of the academic style that emphasized precise drawing and smoothly modeled forms. This painting depicts the wealthy Roman woman Aglaida and her concubine slave Boniface, here living as pagan sinners in Rome around 290 CE. On a trip to Tarsus on the Anatolian coast, Boniface converted to Christianity and was tortured and beheaded. Aglaida also converted to Christianity, gave all her possessions to the poor, and built a church for Boniface's relics. Alexandre Cabanel was a leader of the academic artists who rejected the paintings of Édouard Manet and other "realists" from the Salon of 1863, producing a vast outcry that forced the government to organize the alternative Salon des Refusés.

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