Detail of Semiramis Building Babylon by Degas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: Semiramis Building Babylon

Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)

Date: 1861

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 59 5/8 in. × 8 ft. 5 9/16 in. (151.5 × 258 cm)
Framed: 68 7/8 in. × 9 ft. 3 in., 108 lb. (175 × 282 cm, 49 kg)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Musée d'Orsay, Paris (RF 2207)

Although Degas’s major interest became subjects taken from modern life, his early ambitions focused on history painting. This cryptic tableau portrays Semiramis, a legendary Assyrian queen and founder of Babylon, with her retinue. The artist kept this picture and other such works made in the late 1850s and early 1860s in his studio, where he showed them to visitors. Manet reportedly recommended that he exhibit Semiramis in public, wickedly noting, “It will make for some variety in your work.”

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/851712