This picture of 1891 is based on a portion of a triptych, Vision of Antiquity—Symbol of Form, that Puvis executed for the Palais des Arts, Lyons, in 1884–86. It realizes the artist's aims: "I have wanted to be more and more sober, and more and more simple. I have condensed, summarized, compressed. I have tried to say as much as possible in a few words." The artist's unique poetic and decorative sensibility—his inventive interpretation of traditional subjects, simplification of form, light, and space, chalky pale colors, and frescolike technique—was appreciated by Symbolist poets and critics as well as by younger artists, among them Gauguin and Seurat.

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