Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Semiramis Building Babylon
Edgar Degas French
Not on view
Although Degas’s major interest became subjects taken from modern life, his early ambitions focused on history painting. This cryptic tableau portrays Semiramis, a legendary Assyrian queen and founder of Babylon, with her retinue. The artist kept this picture and other such works made in the late 1850s and early 1860s in his studio, where he showed them to visitors. Manet reportedly recommended that he exhibit Semiramis in public, wickedly noting, “It will make for some variety in your work.”
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