Sappho og Mytilenerinden 1807 - 1808

Curator: Looking at this quick sketch, I feel a sense of profound melancholy and tenderness, something fragile and fleeting captured in ink. Editor: Indeed. This is "Sappho og Mytilenerinden," created between 1807 and 1808 by Nicolai Abildgaard. It’s held at the SMK, Statens Museum for Kunst, and done with light pencil work in pen and ink on toned paper. I wonder, how might we interpret it through the lens of its materials? The paper itself, for example, dictated certain possibilities for Abildgaard. Curator: Absolutely, the toned paper provides an immediate ground, eliminating the stark white. This wasn't a grand commission, but rather seems to emerge from personal exploration, maybe a storyboard sketch done in preparation for larger-scale work. You get the sense it's less about finalized imagery, and more an act of production: how he is developing this story. Editor: Right, and contextually, the story itself—Sappho, the famed poet of Lesbos, in an intimate moment. We might ask what made this subject palatable, even desirable, for an early 19th-century Danish audience. How did Abildgaard's presentation of it either challenge or conform to prevailing social attitudes of his time towards female same-sex relationships, especially through the art institutions which mediated its display and the wider public discourse? Curator: And you also sense Abildgaard considering Sappho’s profession, a musical instrument is next to her as the source and engine to a deeply individual artistry. Perhaps an appeal, beyond accepted historical parameters of its display and more, into an exploration of artistic labor itself, a consideration of what goes into making things. What that kind of personal expression demands of the artist. Editor: This small work, then, becomes more than just an image, and speaks volumes about how stories and production become meaningful. Curator: A material consideration as well: Abildgaard captures her interior life. A powerful message when reframed around gender, history, and art-making itself.