Perched upon a Bust of Pallas (1875): Art, History and Details

Perched upon a Bust of Pallas (1875) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Edouard Manet created this lithograph for his friend Stephane Mallarmé’s 1875 French translation of American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem “The Raven” (1845) about a man mourning his deceased love who is visited by a raven that repeatedly cries, “Nevermore.” Mallarmé’s edition is considered one of the first modern livres d’artistes—books created specifically as works of visual art. Manet created four full-page illustrations, including the scene in which the raven stares at the narrator from the top of the bust of the goddess Athena, and a raven head design used on the book’s cover and on its advertising poster.

Object facts

• Title: Perched upon a Bust of Pallas
• Date: 1875
• Creator attribution: Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Image: 48.5 x 32.7 cm (19 1/8 x 12 7/8 in.); Sheet: 55.5 x 39 cm (21 7/8 x 15 3/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1926.297

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Ralph King

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.