Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse paintings of Melpoméne, she is represented with a tragic mask and also often holds in her other hand a knife or club. In Greek mythology, she is the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who had eight other daughters, Melpoméne's sisters and the eight other muses are: Calliope, muse of epic poetry; Clio, muse of history; Euterpe, muse of flute playing; Terpsichore, muse of dancing; Erato, muse of erotic poetry; Thalia muse of comedy; Polyhymnia, muse of hymns; and Urania, muse of astronomy. Reynolds was inspired not only by Sarah Siddons' extreme talent to embody the tragic heroine in Macbeth, but
Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville one weep." Ingres spent the first six months of 1845 working intensely on the portrait, which was finished by summer of that year. Art historian (and Frick curator emeritus) Edgar Munhall has suggested that both "Antiochus and Stratonice" as well as Ingres's portrait of Louise owe an inspirational debt to the pose of Pudicitia ("modesty" or "sexual valor"), a Roman statue of a goddess on display in the Vatican collection. In his book on Ingres, Robert Rosenblum connects her pose to Polyhymnia, muse of sacred poetry, hymn, and eloquence, as depicted particularly in the Louvre's Roman copy of a Greek