Burne-Jones's Perseus Series

In my last series of posts based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, we looked at pictures of Danae. Let's turn our attention now to her son, Perseus. Ovid tells two main stories about Perseus in Book IV: Perseus and Atlas and Perseus and Andromeda, with the story of Perseus and Medusa told in flashback as a coda. Book V starts with a fight between the supporters of Perseus and the supporters of Phineus, Andromeda's former fiance. (The picture of Sir Edward Burne-Jones is a photogravure based on a portrait of him by his son Philip. It is in the public domain and comes from wikicommons.)

The story of Perseus and Andromeda in particular proved a prolific source of inspiration for artists, but we'll start with a wider look at the whole story as shown in a series of paintings by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. He was commissioned to produce a series of large paintings based on the story of Perseus for Arthur Balfour. Although the series of paintings was never finished, a series of cartoons or studies for the pictures are now in the Southampton City Art Gallery. The completed paintings in the series are now in Stuttgart's Staatsgalerie, which has the pictures online, but hasn't seen fit to provide any way of linking to them. They are currently on loan to the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Those who intend being in Stuttgart from 24 November 2009 to 7 February 2010 might wish to go to a Burne-Jones exhibition the Staatsgalerie is planning.

The completed paintings are The Call of Perseus:



Perseus and the Sea Nymphs:



Perseus and the Graiae:



The Finding of Medusa:



The Death of Medusa:



The Rock of Doom:



The Doom Fulfilled:



The Baleful Head:



Two pictures for which studies exist in Southampton but which do not have completed versions in Stuttgart are Atlas Turned to Stone and another version of The Death of Medusa.

Burne-Jones's pictures were based on William Morris's The Doom of King Acrisius. The Victorian Web has a series of pages pairing the Stuttgart pictures with the relevant parts of the poem and a series of essays and questions to ponder about the paintings (scroll down to find the index: the list may not look like links but they are).

Burne-Jones combined variations on "The Rock of Doom" and "The Doom Fulfilled" in 1876 to produce a painting called "Perseus and Andromeda", which is now in Adelaide's Art Gallery of South Australia.

Danae: the 19th Century and after

These two pictures from the 19th century do not show the naked Danae and shower of gold we have seen in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The picture on the left shows Danae watching the construction of the brazen tower where her father was to imprison her and was painted by Sir Edward Burne-Jones in 1888. It is now in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, but not on their website. The image (below) is of a photograph of an 1892 painting by John William Waterhouse showing the rescue of Danae and her baby son, Perseus. The painting was stolen in 1947 and has never been recovered. (the picture on the left is from museumsyndicate, all other pictures in this post are from wikicommons, and are in the public domain.)







The above 1907 painting by Gustav Klimt is now in a private collection.

In 1947, Richard Strauss wrote an opera, Die Liebe der Danae. (correction from David Derrick of The Toynbee Convector: Strauss completed the opera in 1940) YouTube has two extracts, one of which is embedded below (discussed in the comments to my post on Danae in the 16th century).

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