Love, Life, Death, and Desire: An Installation of the Center's Collections (Yale Center for British Art, 2020-10-01 - 2021-02-28)Noble Simplicity and Silent Greatness - Neoclassical Art from 1700 - 1900 (Yale University Art Gallery, 1991-04-26 - 1991-09-29)Classic Ground - British Artists and the Landscape of Italy, 1740-1830 (Yale Center for British Art, 1981-07-29 - 1981-09-20)Romance and Reality (Wildenstein) (Wildenstein & Company, Inc., 1978-09-22 - 1978-12-07)
Publications:
Lance Bertelsen, David Garrick and English Painting, Eighteenth Century Studies, vol. 11, Spring 1978, pp.311, 320, fig. 5, NX452 E54 11 (YCBA)Lance Bertelsen, David Garrick and English Painting, Eighteenth Century Studies, vol. 11, Spring 1978, pp.311, 320, fig. 5, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2738195Duncan Bull, Classic ground : British artists and the landscape of Italy, 1740-1830, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1981, pp. 13, 37-8, no. 36, pl. II, ND1354.4 B85 (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 262-263, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA)Matthew Craske, Joseph Wright of Derby : Painter of darkness, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven, pp. 216-217, fig. 144, NJ18.W95 C72 2020+ (YCBA)Judy Egerton, Wright of Derby, Tate Publishing, London, 1990, p. 120-21, NJ18 W95 +E54 1990 Oversize (YCBA)Llewellynn Jewitt, Wright of Derby, Art Journal, vol. 60, December 1866, p. 377, J10 Ar74 + (LSF)Joseph Wright of Derby, St. James Chronicle or the British Evening Post, London, April 29-May 1, 1779, Arts & Entertainment page, Available online from 17th-18th Century Burney C Available online from 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers.Benedict Nicolson, Wright of Derby: Addenda and Corrigenda, Burlington Magazine, vol. 130, October 1988, pp. 755, 756, fig.42, N1 B87 + (YCBA) Also available online at JSTOR.J. B. Trapp, The Grave of Vergil, Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes, vol. 47, 1984, pp. 26 n.166, pls 10b, AS122 L8515 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Wright painted many versions of this composition, one of his most popular subjects. It represents Silius Italicus, a Roman consul under the Emperor Nero who devoted his later life to the study of literature. His passionate admiration for Vergil led him to buy the poet's estate and tomb at Posillipo, near Naples. Each year he recited Vergil’s poetry inside the tomb on the anniversary of the poet’s death. Wright shows him inside the tomb by candlelight, declaiming Vergil's verses aloud as though trying to raise his spirit. Gallery label for Love, Life, Death, and Desire: An Installation of the Center's Collections (Yale Center for British Art, 2020-11-01 – 2021-02-28)