  About the Artwork
  
  
  Belisarius was a celebrated Byzantine general during the 500s CE. His armies conquered extensive territories around the Mediterranean for Emperor Justinian I, garnering him fame that made him a target for political intrigue in the imperial court. Rivals accused him of conspiring against the emperor, and, according to a 1767 version of this story popularized by the French novelist François Marmontel, Justinian blinded Belisarius in punishment. Benjamin West, an American painter working in London, shows the general impoverished, blind, and abandoned by his powerful friends, accompanied only by a young boy helping him beg for coins.

For colonial Americans, the story of Belisarius was also an allegory of patriotic virtue undermined by imperial greed. As a diplomat representing Pennsylvania in London, Benjamin Franklin distributed a satirical cartoon in protest of the Stamp Act showing the allegorical figure of Britannia as Belisarius. In that image, Great Britain was abandoned by the thirteen colonies for exploitation and reduced to begging for coins.
  
  
  Title
  Belisarius and the Boy
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1802
  
  Artist
  Benjamin West
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1738-1820
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 26 × 19 inches (66 × 48.3 cm)
  Framed: 34 3/4 × 27 1/2 × 3 3/4 inches (88.3 × 69.9 × 9.5 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Gift of A. Leonard Nicholson
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  13.11
  
  
  Copyright
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