Socrates rebuking Alcibiades at a courtesan's house
1857. Oil on canvas.Not on display
This work is the most important of those executed by the artist during his time in Rome, where he resided on a pension extraordinaria (special allowance) between 1853 and 1858. The painter made careful study of the subject, as shown in the preparatory sketch kept in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Murcia. It underlines the reliance of the subject on the classical motif of Youth, or Hercules, between Virtue and Vice, with the convetional female allegory of Virtue, here replaced by the figure of Socrates. The philosopher goes from holding Alcibiades´ arm in the sketch to questioning him in the final painting, with a didactic rather than a cautionary gesture, thus expressing his moral authority over the libertine young man, as described by Plutarch in his Alcibiades.
The subject had been a theme in Neoclassicism, representing the value of the moral example of a philosopher of antiquity. The artist’s restraint is most evident in the balance of the composition, the order of the planes parallel to the viewer, the accuracy of the drawing, and the somewhat muted softness of the colouring. The almost archaeological fidelity to the past in characters and details – praised by the Spanish critics– is an essential feature of this painting and particularly evident in the depiction of the characters. The face of Alcibiades recalls that of Antinous, as depicted in the bas-relief at Villa Albani (Torlonia) in Rome; nonetheless, his pose, the feline skin on which he is seated, and the crown of vine leaves evoke the figure of Dionysus with Ariadne in depictions on ancient vases and mosaics, the latter motif also suggested by the wine the young man has just drunk. The head of Socrates is that of the well-known ancient archetype in the Vatican Museum. For the figure of the courtesan Theodota, the painter used a study he had made of a female head (Murcia, Private Coll.), which he painted in 1855.
The details of the furnishings and ornamentation also strive for veracity. The Praxitelean-like Eros presiding over the room of the luxurious house is drawn from the iconography of the Apollo Lacchaeus, to which the painter adds the bow and the bandage, as well as the epigraphic inscription. The red-figured oenochoe on the bedside table, for pouring wine into the bronze cup held by Alcibiades and alluding to the other vice that provokes Socrates´ reprimand, is decorated with a female figure associated with the beginnings of early Greek classicism. The interior is not that of a Greek house, but rather an ancient Roman one, like those the artist himself had seen in Pompeii. However, the motifs of fretwork and sticks and the Doric order of the courtyard also refer –in a broad sense– to the Hellenistic world.
The painter sent the work to Madrid in 1858, tagged as a pensioner work. On 14 April of that year it was exhibited in the main gallery of the Ministry of Public Works. Shortly afterwards it was acquired by Royal Order of 10-V-1858 for 35,000 reales, addressed to the Museo Nacional de Pintura y Escultura. It was submitted for the National Exhibition of Fine Arts that same year, and was awarded a second-class medal.
The painting´s dissemination was noteworthy, to which Pedro Martí´s engravings for the Valencian magazine Revista Bellas Artes (1-VI-1858) and Tomás Carlos Capuz´s wood engravings for the Madrid magazine El Museo Universal (30-XI-1858) contributed. The critic of the latter considered the work one of the best in the exhibition: the figure of the philosopher is dignified, and his attitude suitable; that the courtesan –whose head is beautiful in form and expression– has a colour in her throat and breast that leaves nothing to be desired; that her form is at once grandiose and delicate, reveals an uncommon taste and feeling for art.Barón, Javier, Germán Hernández Amores Sócrates reprendiendo a Alcibíades en casa de una cortesana' En:. El vaso griego y sus destinos. Cabrera,P. Rouillard,P. Verbank-Pierard, A.(dir.), Madrid, Ministerio de Cultura, 2004, p.370-371 n.149
