Sappho. 1910. Pear wood

Sappho was a poet in ancient Greece, and was even considered to be the tenth Muse. She established a school for girls on the island of Lesbos, where they were taught everything necessary for life, from keeping house and good manners, to music, dance and poetry.
Sappho’s poems, of which only fragments have survived, include hymns to the gods, and wedding and love songs.

Since many of Sappho’s poems have an erotic undertone, and the beauty of women is often praised in them, sexual intercourse between women started to be called lesbianism, after the island where the poet lived.

Amandus Adamson, who created the work, was one of the first Estonian sculptors. He worked primarily in St. Petersburg and at the end of his life in Paldiski.