123 cm × 200 cm (48 in × 79 in)
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The Victory of Faith is an oil on canvas painting by the Irish artist Saint George Hare (1857–1933), completed in 1891.[a]1891 is cited by most sources, but the National Gallery of Victoria also gives 1890 as a possibility.[1] It depicts two sleeping nude women, one shackled, apparently Christian martyrs sentenced to death by beasts (damnatio ad bestias).[2]
The women are lying asleep on some straw, behind them a lion’s cage, through the bars of which the animals are glaring at their victims.
A contemporary article in The Homiletic Review of 1894 called the painting an “impressive depiction of Christian faith and steadfastness”, and described the two women as being in a “sisterly embrace”.[3] A more modern assessment by the art historian Kobena Mercer considered the work to be a depiction of an interracial lesbian couple, likening it to Les Amis by Jules Robert Auguste.[4]
The Victory of Faith was exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1891, and at the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893.[b]A celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492. It is currently in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, having been donated to the gallery anonymously in 1905.[1]
Notes
| a | 1891 is cited by most sources, but the National Gallery of Victoria also gives 1890 as a possibility.[1] |
|---|---|
| b | A celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492. |
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