Lion in the Lazaretto

The figure-ground in this work is layered with linear figure studies inspired by a Niccolo dell’ Abate drawing, “The Calumny of Apelles” (c.1512). The former drawing depicts the Greek painter Apelles brought before King Ptolemy Soter of Egypt under a false charge. Lowe has placed Apelles barely visible at the center of the composition awaiting judgment, with Calumny personified as a ‘woman with a stiletto’ after a Henry Fuseli drawing of the same name (c.1817). The lion functions as a symbol of King Ptolemy’s hostility in his pursuit of Truth, taken from Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘St Jerome’ (c.1482). A female nude, personifying repentance, has been copied from Giambattista Tiepolo's work ‘The Suicide of Ajax’(c.1722), which illustrates a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.