Socrates Discovers Alcibiades in the Women's Quarters
by DEMIN, Giovanni, Drawing
The subject provided the artist with an opportunity to imagine a neo-Hellenistic interior. Female nudes, shown in different poses, appear in this episode in a moral vein. Hayez had already painted a fresco on this subject in the small round room of the Palazzo Papadopoli. Now Demin brought it into focus with a graphic study in which it would appear he intended his painting to emulate the measured falseness of Canova’s marbles.