River God Ilissos and Cleopatra

A man dressed in the eighteenth-century fashion stands between sculptures of the river god Ilissos and Cleopatra.

This picture is from Die Werke Friedrichs des Großen (The works of Frederick the Great) and was meant to illustrate the Epistle to de La Motte Fouqué in which Homer, represented by the river god Ilissos from the Parthenon is compared to Voltaire, represented by the sculpture of Cleopatra from Sanssouci.

The caption reads in the original German: Vignette zur ‘Epistel an de la Motte Fouqué.’