Young Spartan Girls Challenging Boys

Young Spartan Girls Challenging Boys by Edgar Degas: In 1859 Edgar Degas returned to Paris following a prolonged stay in Italy, where he visited relatives in N…

What to notice

Follow the opposing groups of young women and men across the friezelike space; athletic gestures and unfinished passages keep the imagined ancient contest in motion.

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In 1859 Edgar Degas returned to Paris following a prolonged stay in Italy, where he visited relatives in Naples and Florence and attended life classes at the Académie Française in Rome. This picture, undertaken around 1860, speaks to his ambition to realize canvases featuring scenes from the Bible, as well as ancient and more recent history. Degas took his subject from the life of Lycurgus, a legendary ninth-century b.c. Spartan lawgiver. Lycurgus’s social reforms included an unusual method of physical training in…