Arethusa

The next story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is that of Arethusa, a nymph who was turned into a spring by the goddess Diana to protect her from the river Alphaeus who was chasing her.(photo of Arethusa's spring in Syracuse copyright Giovanni Dall'Orto, used by permission)


The Philadelphia Museum of Art has an Italian plate dated to 1531 showing Arethusa fleeing from Alphaeus.

The above statue group of Arethusa and Alphaeus was created by Battista di Domenico Lorenzi in the early 1570s and is now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. (used by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)



Pace Audrey Hepburn in the film Roman Holiday, the 1820 poem about Arethusa was by Shelley, not Keats.

Legras painted the above picture of Arethusa in 1874, and it is now in Cherbourg’s Musée Thomas-Henry, but does not appear to be on their website. (public domain image from wikicommons)

Arthur Bowen Davies’s 1901 painting of Arethusa is now in Youngstown’s Butler Institute of American Art.


Arethusa’s story was one of those chosen by Benjamin Britten for his Oboe “Six Metamorphoses After Ovid”, composed in 1951, and played here by Nicholas Daniel.

Lucretia: The 18th to 20th Centuries

Having looked at Lucretia in the 16th century and 17th century, we now move on to some later pictures. Our first picture is by Mazzanti and dates from around 1730 and is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Of the two 1750 paintings shown below, the upper one is by Casali and is in Budapest's Szépművészeti Múzeum, but does not seem to be shown on their website. However, another painting of Lucretia by Casali and dating to 1761 is now in Paris's Louvre. The lower picture here is by Tiepolo and is now in Augsberg's Staatsgalerie am Shaezler Palais, but again does not appear to be on their website.





Burne Jones painted a picture of Lucretia in 1867, although the image started off life as a design for a stained glass window. The picture is now in Birmingham's Museums and Art Gallery.

In the 20th century, Benjamin Britten wrote an opera called "The Rape of Lucretia". It is due to be performed in Philadelphia in June, 2009. An extract from the San Francisco Lyric Opera's production can be seen below.



This series of three posts by no means includes all of the Lucretias ever painted. You can see more pictures on the theme of Lucretia at:

ultraorange.net

The Lucretia in Art Project

The Visual History of the World

Bacchus and Pentheus

Book III of the Metamorphoses concludes with the story of Pentheus, the king of Thebes who resisted the introduction of the worship of Bacchus and was torn to pieces by a group of Bacchic worshippers including his own mother. This is of course the plot of Euripides' "The Bacchae". Within this story is the story told by Acoetes of how Bacchus turned a shipload of sailors who wanted to kidnap him and sell him into slavery into dolphins. (public domain picture of dolphin from wikicommons)

The contemporary artist Paul Reid has a picture of Pentheus (scroll down -- middle picture in the third row). The story of Bacchus is one of those Benjamin Britten used for his Six Metamorphoses after Ovid. The Youtube video below shows a performance by Nicholas Daniel.