A new portrait of St John’s Emeritus Fellow Professor Donald Russell has been unveiled today during a ceremony held in the President’s Lodgings at the College.
The painting was commissioned by over a hundred of Professor Russell’s colleagues, friends and students, to honour the significant contribution he has made to Classical scholarship and to the teaching of Classics at Oxford during his long career.
Professor Russell gave a moving speech to mark the occasion, which concluded with an epigram in Ancient Greek:
εἰκόν’ ἐμοῦ Μούσαις ἀνεθήκατε· καὶ χάριν οἶδα
τῆς τιμῆς ἕνεκεν τῆς τε φιλοφροσύνης·
καὶ γὰρ σὺν λογίοις ἔσομαι πάλιν ανδράσιν οἷσι
πολλὰ συνῆν πρότερον πολλὰ διδασκόμενος.
You have dedicated my picture to the Muses.
I am grateful for the honour and the good will,
For I shall once again be with scholars with whom
I formerly spent much time and learned much.
The portrait by artist Mark Hancock is on indefinite loan to the Ioannou Centre, and can be found just outside the First Floor Seminar Room, alongside the portraits of his mentor E.R. Dodds and contemporary Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones.
