Colma Discovering the Dead Bodies of Salgar and her Brother, Bartolomeo Pinelli, 1809

pen, h 346mm × w 465mm More details

Pinelli was best known for his illustrations of classical writings such as the Aeneid and the Divine Comedy. In 1809 he made several large drawings of scenes from the Ballads of Ossian, a sensational forgery from 1762 of Scottish-Gaelic epic poems supposedly from the 3rd century. Here the heroine Colma discovers the bodies of her brother and her lover Salgar, who had been dueling because of a protracted family feud.