r/SapphoAndHerFriend

In 1778, two Irish aristocrats ran away from home together, got caught, tried again, and eventually built a life in a rented Welsh cottage that turned into one of the most talked about addresses in Georgian Britain.

Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby spent the next fifty years there, hosting poets, generals and eventually a queen's own interest, while carefully never explaining exactly what their relationship was.

Two centuries later, historians are still arguing about it, and once you get past the postcard version of the story, it's a lot more than two ladies who just liked living together.

“In these paintings, allegorical figures give form to abstract concepts by way of the attributes associated with them. Light-bearing Truth locks eyes with Mercy, symbolized by a self-sacrificing pelican nursing its young with blood. Peace, holding a laurel branch in her right hand, embraces balance-wielding Justice. Together, these pendant paintings evoke Psalm 85:10: ‘Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.’"

Truth and Mercy (1745)

Peace and Justice (1745)

Pompeo Batoni at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts