L'Allegro

Charles West Cope's L'Allegro of 1848 takes its title from Milton's famous companion poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso — the cheerful man and the melancholy man — and likely depicts a figure embodying the merry, sociable, light-hearted spirit of the first poem. Milton's L'Allegro was one of the most widely quoted texts in Victorian literary culture, its catalogue of pleasures — mirth, song, dance, laughter, festivity — offering both a poetic programme and a visual subject for painters attracted to the poetry of mood. Cope was not typically a literary painter in the strict sense, but L'Allegro allowed him to paint a figure embodying an emotional and social ideal — cheerfulness, the pleasures of innocent sociability — that connected to his broader interest in the domestic virtues. The title gave a classical-literary authority to what might otherwise seem a simple figure study.

The figure embodies the allegorical cheerfulness of Milton's poem through an animated, outwardly directed pose and expression — in contrast to the inward, contemplative posture that Il Penseroso would demand. Cope's handling is smooth and warm, the figure's face the emotional centre. The composition is relatively straightforward, the figure against a simple setting.