Vinnie Ream’s Sappho is my ideal woman

Sappho was a Greek poet who wrote verses about womanly love. Err, I mean they’re just gals being pals, amirite? I’m sure they were just realllllly good friends. Nothing to see here. Though Ream, a 19th century sculptor, probably didn’t tend toward the L in LGBTQ, she sculpted Sappho with the intention of immortalizing the concept of an “ideal woman.” A replica of Sappho even marks Ream’s grave at Arlington Cemetery.

Sappho got her reputation as a lesbian because her surviving verses describe passionate love between women. It’s kind of easy to make that assumption. I wish Sappho were alive today to produce that good lesbian content I so desperately need in my life. But these verses are only fragments of the nine volumes of work that she wrote, and we’ll never know the whole story. We do know that Sappho was important enough to be memorialized on coins centuries after her death and that she invented the poetic Sapphic Meter.

Ream was part of a group of 19th century American women like Harriet Hosmer who mastered the neoclassical style, meaning they were obsessed with subject matter from antiquity, Greek mythology, and literature. The “white, Marmorean flock” were American women who sculpted for a period of a few years in Rome. Where else would ya get all the finest marble, anyway? Not at the Home Depot! Sappho was one of the sculptures Ream completed in Rome - the neoclassical obsession is apparent in the contrapposto pose of the figure and the traditional Greek lettering of Sappho’s name.

Thanks goes to Sappho and Vinnie Ream for the gay content I’ve been looking for!