Aspasia of Miletus – teacher of Socrates

A woman with loose grey-brown curls tilts her head and looks down at you with a steady, tired gaze, in ink and soft washes of sky blue, ochre and grey.

Aspasia came to Athens from Miletus in the 5th century BC and became the partner of Pericles. In Plato’s dialogue Menexenus, Socrates says she taught him rhetoric and wrote Pericles’ famous funeral speech, and Xenophon also has Socrates sending pupils to her. Yet none of her own words survive. History kept her mostly through the comic poets who mocked her and the men who mentioned her in passing, while the teaching she gave Socrates was left out of the story told about him.

Watercolour and ink on cotton paper, framed at 17cm by 17cm. There is only one of this painting. If it sells before you get to it, I will gladly paint another in the same theme, though never an exact copy.