The Symposium

This classical scene illustrates a passage from ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s Symposium, in which the attendees of a symposium, or philosophical dinner party, debate the meaning of ideal love. It is a late work of a brilliant and ambitious artist, Pietro Testa. Without knowledge of earlier precedents, Testa crafted this unusual image as a visual argument. The poses and actions of the three men on the left demonstrate his method: they represent beauty, poetry, and philosophy in the persons of Alcibiades, Agathon, and Socrates. The classically posed, hedonistic Alcibiades, representing beauty, arrives ostentatiously drunk and uninvited just as Socrates is giving the final speech. Agathon, representing poetry, tries to interest Alcibiades in the discussion. Socrates, as philosophy, ignores them and carries on with his oration. Wine has been put away to permit the speakers to focus on their discourse, and the inscription on the back wall, “wine weighs down the feast [but] wisdom feeds the soul,” sharpens the contrast between the worldly Alcibiades, and Socrates, who feasts on wisdom.