Manfred and Astarte

Henri Fantin-Latour was particularly inspired by music. Here, he illustrates a scene from composer Robert Schumann’s 1848 adaptation of Lord Byron’s dramatic poem Manfred (1817). Manfred, a nobleman tormented by remorse after the death of his beloved, Astarte, summons a succession of spirits before the ghost of Astarte herself appears to him. The strong contrast between dark and light in rendering the two characters suggests Manfred’s trespass and Astarte’s innocence. Like Schumann’s overture, Richard Wagner’s operas offered Fantin-Latour a rich source of themes and imagery. Fantin-Latour manipulated the lithographic medium—playing up the lithographic stone’s graininess, drawing into it with crayon, and scraping away lines—to enhance the hazy atmosphere of his prints and convey the sensations, emotions, and ideas central to Wagner’s works. Many Symbolist artists embraced Wagner’s concept of a “total work of art” fusing music with other art forms, which echoed Symbolism’s own interdisciplinary nature.