Greek Marriage

Happy bridegroom,
Your marriage has been fulfilled,
As you prayed.

Happy bride,

Your form is graceful, your eyes...

Gentle, and love streams
Over your fair face.

...Aphrodite has honoured you above all.
~ Sappho

An Ancient Greek wedding hymn, painted on white parchment paper with layers of tempera to form a terracotta coloured border, with Greek style detail picked out in gold leaf. The text has a background of gold and the writing is a bright gold for the Greek text and a warm metallic brown for the English translation. It was commissioned as a wedding gift.

The text is an epithalamium (Greek marriage-hymn), the theme is 'makarismos' (blessing to the bridal couple) and the poem is an adaptation of Sappho fragment 112.