Before we leave ancient painting we ought to mention a picture of Sappho in a garb as a lutist which the encyclopaedic Pliny assigns to Leon.[122] We know nothing about him, but he was probably one of the numerous second rate artists of Hellenistic times. An epigram in the Anthology and the Christian Father Tatian[123] seem to have referred to this portrait. Several Pompeian frescoes, and one from Herculaneum representing a lady with a _stilus_ about to write her thoughts on a tablet, have been named Sappho. Only in the case of one[124] do I feel that there is any probability at all that Sappho was meant, and in that one Alcaeus appears standing by the side of the seated Lesbian poetess (Pl. 18).
There must have been statues and busts of Sappho, but so many have been called Sappho without definite evidence that it is difficult to know where to stop. We must always bear in mind that early Greek art in Sappho’s day did not believe in realistic portraiture and that all representations of Sappho are “study heads,” conceptions of later artists. The most famous statue mentioned in literature is that by Silanion, the Greek sculptor of the fourth century B.C., who was so noted for his Plato and Corinna.[125] We learn from Cicero’s _Oration against Verres_[126] and from Tatian’s _Complaint against the Greeks or Pagans_ that this bronze statue, on the base of which Cicero was still able to read the epigram, stood in the prytaneum at Syracuse, perhaps a memorial of Sappho’s sojourn in Sicily. Cicero tells us that it was stolen by Verres and praises it highly: “Could this work of Silanion, so perfect, so refined, so finished, be in fitter hands public or private than those of a man so refined and cultured as Verres?... And how sorely this stolen Sappho was missed is almost more than words can tell. Not only was the poetess exquisitely portrayed, but there was a world-famous Greek couplet inscribed upon the base.... For the inscription on the empty base declares to-day what the statue was, thus proclaiming the theft” (Edmonds).
We know from literature of the existence of two other later statues. We have spoken (p. 34) of the epigram of Damocharis which refers to a portrait of Sappho with bright eyes and mixed expression of gaiety and graveness. An epigram by Antipater[127] (p. 8) is thought to come from a statue at Pergamum and since part of an inscription found at Pergamum[128] mentions Alcaeus, it is a plausible conjecture that the lost portion contained the name of Sappho. This is probably the same bronze seated statue which in the fifth century A.D. stood in the gymnasium of Zeuxippus at Constantinople and which is described by Christodorus in his Greek Anthology:[129] “She seemed to be weaving a well-hymned song, concentrating her thought on the silent Muses.”