{
"data": {
"id": 166657,
"accession_number": "2008.374",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Aristomenes Mourning the Death of Socrates from the Bewitchment of Mero\u00eb (from Book 1 of Apuleius, \"The Golden Ass\"), 1795. Antoine-Denis Chaudet (French, 1763\u20131810). Brush and black and gray wash, heightened with white gouache, over graphite; sheet: 27.9 x 21.3 cm (11 x 8 3/8 in.); image: 19.8 x 10.3 cm (7 13/16 x 4 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Muriel Butkin, 2008.374",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Aristomenes Mourning the Death of Socrates from the Bewitchment of Mero\u00eb (from Book 1 of Apuleius, \"The Golden Ass\")",
"creation_date": "1795",
"creation_date_earliest": 1795,
"creation_date_latest": 1795,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France"
],
"technique": "brush and black and gray wash, heightened with white gouache, over graphite",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "light gray wove paper",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - French",
"type": "Drawing",
"measurements": "Sheet: 27.9 x 21.3 cm (11 x 8 3/8 in.); Image: 19.8 x 10.3 cm (7 13/16 x 4 1/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.279,
"height_inch": 11,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.213,
"width_inch": 8,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.375
},
"image": {
"height": 0.198,
"height_inch": 7,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"width": 0.103,
"width_inch": 4,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "signed, lower left, in black ink: Chaudet del. 1795.; by artist, upper left, in black ink: Apul\u00e9e, Metam. v.1; by artist, upper right, in black ink: II; by artist, lower center, in black ink: Aristomene pleure Socrate expirant par l'effet des ma= / l\u00e9fices de Mero\u00e9.; upper right, in graphite: A; verso, upper left, in graphite: [buza?] [underlined] / [Nello?]; upper center, in graphite: 123 / b [circled] ",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 187360,
"title": "French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin",
"description": "French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 26-October 28, 2001); Dahesh Museum of Art (February 19-May 18, 2002).",
"opening_date": "2001-08-26T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Probably Marie Joseph Fran\u00e7ois Mah\u00e9rault; [probably his sale, H\u00f4tel Drouot, Paris (27-29 May 1880), 9, as part of lot no. 19: \"Dix dessins pour illustrer l'Ane d'or d'Apul\u00e9e. Ces dessins sont d'une remarquable finesse. Sign\u00e9s et dat\u00e9s 1795. S\u00e9pia et encre de Chine rehauss\u00e9es de blanc.\"]. \"A late nineteenth-century French collection\" (according to Baskett and Day, London). [Galerie Jacques Fischer-Chantal Kiener, Paris]; purchased in 1986.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This scene represents the end of a complex episode from the Roman writer Apuleius's (2nd century ad) story The Golden Ass. Aristomenes narrates a tale to the book's main character, Lucius, about a friend named Socrates, whom he meets during his travels. After a disastrous affair with a witch named Mero\u00eb, Socrates dies from a wound she inflicts to his throat, and the scene shown here is the moment just after his death. Chaudet is mainly known as a sculptor, but he also designed a number of book illustrations for the most important publisher of the neoclassic period, the Didot firm. Although we know he did a number of drawings for The Golden Ass, the project was never realized as a book.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79997214"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2008.374-aristomenes-mourning"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 21, p.52-53",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2008.374",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2008.374/2008.374_web.jpg",
"width": "696",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "403512",
"filename": "2008.374_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2008.374/2008.374_print.jpg",
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},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Bequest of Muriel Butkin",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 166657,
"creators": [
{
"id": 38889,
"description": "Antoine-Denis Chaudet (French, 1763\u20131810)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1763",
"death_year": "1810",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2009-03-02T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1795,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1795",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-08-22 11:53:17.775000"
}
}