In The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and Muses, how is the Structure and Symbolism of the The Painting elucidated?
The Sacred Grove unlike other paintings of the time, is in a classical style which is much more calculated and restrained. Puvis employs a pyramidal device in many of his works, including Young Girls by the Seaside. The muses are placed in such a way that creates a triangle between them and the fresco in the background. The canvas is careful in its detail, which leaves the viewer with a sense of calm. The landscape is divided into four main horizontal panels, the foreground occupied by the muses and interspersed with flowers and greenery, the middle ground in which a river flows and the background made up of pale coloured mountains that surround the rest of the scene. The painting peopled with the muses dispersed in groups around the landscape, help to frame the composition through their body positions: reclining figures who "parallel the bank" and the seated muse on the left who echoes the tree's shape.The Bunkamura Museum claimed that The Sacred Grove gives the viewer an image of a "Utopia" and depicts "a profound allegoric world...known as a pioneering body of Symbolist works." The Allegorical mode, based on knowledge and reason, is employed in the painting through the use of tributes to ancient Greek mythology: scriptures for law, the harp for music. Allegorical figures of painting, architecture and sculpture are also centred in the piece. The purpose of allegory is also to show the bond between science and the arts. Females were often pictured in the nude so as to idealise them and hold the audience's focus on the allegory itself, as can be seen in The Sacred Grove.
ancient Greek mythology muses Allegorical Greek mythology