Titles

References to the title are as follows:

• 'le tableau de M. Schnetz … representant un Prisonier [sic] faisant ses Adieux à sa famille' (1857, Whistler). 1
• 'a woman holding up a child toward a barred window and a man seen looking through the bars' (1900, Whistler). 2
• 'Copy after Schnetz's Les Adieux du consul Boëtius à sa famille ' (1980, YMSM). 3

"Copy after Schnetz's 'Les Adieux du consul Boëtius à sa famille' " is the preferred title.

Description

Schnetz's subject is described on the Joconde website as 'Le consul Boëtius, philosophe et homme politique, enfermé dans la tour de Pavie par ordre de Théodoric, reçoit les adieux de sa fille et de son petit-fils avant d'aller au supplice.' 4

The original, vivid in colour and highly finished, shows the outside of a prison, with a barred arched window high up, out of which a bearded old man reaches out to a golden-haired child in pale blue clothes. The child is held up by a woman in bright robes (a dark green cloak, orangey-red overdress with a blue border, ochre dress, and white scarf embroidered with gold). In the foreground at lower left is an old woman seated on the ground, at right, a black dog.

It is not known if Whistler painted the whole scene.