Young Spartans Exercising. Young Spartans Exercising, also known as Young Spartans and also as Young Spartan Girls Challenging Boys, is an early oil on canvas painting by French impressionist artist Edgar Degas.
The work depicts two groups of male and female Spartan youth exercising and challenging each other in some way. The work is now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in London.
The painting depicts as its subject matter two groups of older children, four girls and five boys, with the girls apparently taunting or beckoning the boys. The girls are positioned to the left of the painting, the boys to the right, while in-between the two groups in the background appear a third group watching them; their appearance striking as they are fully dressed while the youth in the foreground stand naked or topless.
Behind the onlookers, identified as Lycurgus and the mothers of the children, lies the city of Sparta, dominated by Mount Taygetus, from which the bodies of the society's unfit children were supposedly thrown into a ravine, to die from trauma or exposure. The painting was begun in 1860 with Degas returning to the canvas to rework the piece over the following years, though it remained unfinished upon the artist's death.
X-rays taken of the work during the early 21st century have revealed that Degas changed the positioning of the youths, their faces, and even their number; this last change
The work depicts two groups of male and female Spartan youth exercising and challenging each other in some way. The work is now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in London.
The painting depicts as its subject matter two groups of older children, four girls and five boys, with the girls apparently taunting or beckoning the boys. The girls are positioned to the left of the painting, the boys to the right, while in-between the two groups in the background appear a third group watching them; their appearance striking as they are fully dressed while the youth in the foreground stand naked or topless.
Behind the onlookers, identified as Lycurgus and the mothers of the children, lies the city of Sparta, dominated by Mount Taygetus, from which the bodies of the society's unfit children were supposedly thrown into a ravine, to die from trauma or exposure. The painting was begun in 1860 with Degas returning to the canvas to rework the piece over the following years, though it remained unfinished upon the artist's death.
X-rays taken of the work during the early 21st century have revealed that Degas changed the positioning of the youths, their faces, and even their number; this last change
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