The Young Sophocles Leading the Chorus of Victory after the Battle of Salamis

John Talbott Donoghue

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In his best-known work, Donoghue represented Sophocles, the Greek dramatist of tragedy, in the year 480 B.C., at age sixteen. After the Athenians’ decisive defeat of the Persians in sea combat, the Battle of Salamis, the exultant group erected a trophy. Because of his musical talent, young Sophocles was elected to lead the chorus of victory. He is poised, mouth open in song, as his right hand releases the strings of his lyre. The original plaster was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1886 and was awarded an honorable mention. At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the piece won a first-place prize. In 1917, the Metropolitan Museum purchased a plaster cast from the Art Institute of Chicago, and ten years later, this bronze was replicated from it.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art