Comedy and Tragedy: "Sic Vita
Sir Alfred Gilbert, R. A. (1854-1934)
1891-1900
Bronze, rich brown patination on a marble socle
Height: 29 1/4 inches (75.6 cm.)
In Comedy and Tragedy: "Sic Vita" "a nude youth, helmeted and carrying a comic mask, winces from a bee sting on his left leg. Viewed through the mask, the boy seems to be laughing; seen from the other side, he actually grimaces in pain. Gilbert explained to Hatton that Comedy and Tragedy, a pendant to Perseus Arming, completed "my cycle of stories," the autobiographical trilogy begun with Perseus Arming and continued with Icarus. He described how, in the early I890s, he led a double life -- at night acting the comedy of a famous man about town, but during the day enduring the tragedy of mounting debts and (although he did not say so) an unhappy home life.] . . . Whereas Perseus and Icarus require a front view, here the spectator is invited to move around the statue, constantly shifting his viewpoint, for his eye never comes to rest, and he never discovers a completely satisfactory angle from which to see it. [Victorian High Renaissance]
Photograph and caption from Robert Bowman, Sir Alfred Gilbert and the New Sculpture (2008)