Virgil

Gabriel Thomas’ marble sculpture of Virgil celebrated the Neoclassical fascination with literary subjects. The most celebrated of these were those figures drawn from Dante, such as the Elegiac roman poet Virgil who acts as the guide to the underworld in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Romanticism delighted in the association between Virgil and Dante, but Neoclassical sculpture shifted the focus exclusively to the Roman poet.  This statue stands in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, France