This painting in Hannibal’s office is a lithograph by Peltro William Tomkins of Robert Smirke’s painting The Seven Ages of Man, First Age: The Infant.
Robert Smirke (1752 - 1845) was an English painter and illustrator, specialising in small paintings showing subjects taken from literature and was a member of the Royal Academy.
Robert Smirke’s The Seven Ages of Man is a series of paintings derived from a monologue from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII. The phrase begins as all the world’s a stage. The stages referred are: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon and old age. Painted between 1798 and 1801, they depict the journey of life in its various forms. They were produced for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, and engravings by various artists based on Smirke’s paintings were included in the gallery’s folio edition of Shakespeare’s work.
This painting depicts the first stage, infancy, described as In this stage the man is born as a helpless baby and knows little but waiting as a man in embryo to spring out. In the As You Like It, it refers to:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms
It’s not the only litograph from The Seven Ages of Man used in the show as another one has Hannibal in his home (look forward to next art hannotation).
Another Robert Smirke’s painting called Desert Place near the Sea from A Winter’s Tale, Act III, Scene III has Hannibal in his kichen.
All these three Smirke’s paintings are in the folio of Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, as well as Coriolanus by Gavin Hamilton in Hannibal’s office.
Sending love and puppies to xshiromorix for identifying (with Bryan’s and Hugh’s help, so love and puppies for them too) the painting! :-)
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All descriptions of paintings in Hannibal are here.