Crowning the Victors at Olympia

Date

1792

Creator

Here Barry "depicts the culmination of man’s slow progress toward physical and mental perfection" (Pressly, Life and Art, p. 96). The finest athletes and thinkers of several generations are gathered at one of the Olympic Games of the Greek golden age of the fifth century BCE...[T]he limitations imposed by his materials meant that Barry had to change the proportions he had used in the original painted mural. While the resulting upward expansion of the composition is not entirely successful, much of the detail in the original painting has been retained and the temple of Jupiter Olympius in the background is much more prominent. A statue of Hercules on the left symbolizes physical strength while a statue of Minerva on the right represents wisdom. Barry seats himself, in the guise of the Greek painter Timanthes, at the foot of the Hercules sculpture where he is shown holding one of that artist’s famous paintings...The main group of victors includes Diagoras of Rhodes, a former champion, who is carried on the shoulders of his two sons. In the chariot to the far left rides Hiero of Syracuse, the winner of the chariot race, with Pindar walking beside him playing his lyre. The victor of the horse race appears next on his rearing steed; in the first group of spectators to the right of the horse can be seen Pericles (his head modelled on that of Barry’s own printed portrait of William Pitt of 1778; cat. no. 24), his hand raised as he disputes Cimon, his political opponent. A second group of spectators, consisting of scientists and philosophers, is just visible next to the three principal judges enthroned at the far right of the scene. from Bindman, No Cross, No Crown: Prints by James Barry from the Collection of William L. and Nancy Pressly (Notre Dame, 2016)