Ars (Britannica) Longa
Bernard Partridge
1903
Process (from pen and ink)
Source: Punch (4 February 1903)
Paris — Hôtel des Invalides, 1840 — London — St. Paul’s, Nineteen hundred and ——?:
Shade of F.—M., the Duke of Wellington. “Begad, Sir, Here’s News! They’re going to finish my memorial in St. Paul’s.”
Shade of Napoleon. “Déjà?”
Image from Internet Archive. Many thanks to Shirley Nicholson for correcting the medium used here, and some typos.
The Wellington monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London
The cartoon’s caption plays with the Latin version of a Greek aphorism credited to Hippocrates — “Ars longa, vita brevis” (“life is brief, art is long [or lasts a long time”] — to mock the length of time it had already taken ti complete Alfred Stevens’s magnificent monument in St, Paul’s cathedral, for as the cartoon makes clear. the French completed Napoleon’s monument in 1840 and more than six decades later, Wellington’s remained incomplete! Here “ars longa” means, not that art endures but rather takes a very long time to complete. — George P. Landow
Left: The complete monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Right: The equestrian statue of Wellington. Below: Wellington’s tomb. Click on images to enlarge them.
Last modified 8 October 2021