This chance find sparked a passion that drove Dr. Stanley to locate and examine numerous examples of Leyendecker’s work, demonstrating through his study and writings the ongoing influence of the classical world in Leyendecker’s art. These classical elements, Dr. Stanley argued, tended to play a complex role, serving less as decoration but rather as symbols essential to interpretation.
Framing his scholarly work and life in perspective to that of Hellenistic Greece, Dr. Stanley wrote, “I have no empire to build, my risks are minor, and I shall probably die in the conventional modern way, attached not to a heroic ideal but to a machine with knobs and dials and peeling enamel; but I do not fault the ideal, and had rather live in the shadow of an Achilles than that of the calculating opportunist, Odysseus, or bask in the limelight of the easy, the limited, and the repetitious.
See the world through Dr. Stanley’s eye and explore his
personal collection being offered in our
July Estate Auction, July 21st at 9am EDT.