How does Girls Dancing Around an Obelisk elucidate its History and description?
Hubert Robert had a fascination with the Ancient Egypt, typical of the pre-romanticism of his time. This painting depicts, in an imaginary Egyptian architectural setting, where the Giza pyramids can be seen in the distance, a group of nine young female dancers, wearing white dresses in an antique style and blue and red ribbons at the waist, performing a farandole around the base of an Egyptian obelisk, whose truncated top lies on the ground on the right of the composition, in the shadows. A broken Sphinx is seen at the left, behind the obelisk. The scene is completed by a group of people dressed in more modern attire detailing the ruins, in the lower left, and by musicians playing their instruments perched on a ledge of the obelisk. The tiny figures illustrate the huge dimension, at the distance, of the pyramids.
Ancient Egypt farandole Hubert Robert Sphinx obelisk