We use cookies to make our site work properly, to personalize content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyze our traffic. We also share information about how you use our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Read the Cookies Policy.
Chalepas Yannoulis (1851 - 1938)
Satyr’s Head, 1878
Plaster, 65 x 28 x 25 cm
Donated by the Bank of Greece
Inv. Number
Π.1304
On view
National Glyptotheque
Yannoulis Chalepas was a uniquely gifted artist. But his life and artistic development were marked by the manifestation of mental illness that led to confinement in a psychiatric hospital on the island of Corfu and a forty-year hiatus in his artistic production. The first symptoms of aberrant behavior presented in 1878, the same year that he completed his first body of work, referred to by historians as the “first period.”
“Satyr’s Head” is among the last works of Yannoulis Chalepas’ first creative period. A realistic, highly modeled figure, it is a virtually psychographic, personal portrait of a mature man. The vivid, penetrating gaze and enigmatic smile establish the figure’s personality. The smile appears at once sarcastic or demonic and melancholy, depending on the angle from which it is regarded. In fact, this piece caused Chalepas such emotional distress that he tried to destroy it by scratching and throwing clay at it.