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.

Actaeon -- 18th century onwards

Our second look at representations of the story of Diana and Actaeon starts with the 18th century. Thomas Gainsborough's 1786 picture is in the Royal Collection, while the two statue groups from a variety of hands pictured below are in the grounds of the Caserta Reggia palace near Naples and were made in the late 1770s. (photos from wikicommons, licensed under Creative Commons 2.5 licence)




The 19th century brought an 1836 picture by Corot now in New York's Metropolitan Museum, while Delacroix chose Diana and Actaeon to illustrate Summer in this picture below from a series of paintings on the four seasons, dated 1856-1863. The original is now in Brazil's Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP). (public domain picture via wikipedia)



However, the story does still inspire contemporary artists such as Calum Colvin and Harvey Dinnerstein. Those in the right part of the world might be interested in a forthcoming exhibition on the theme of

Diana und Actaeon: Der verbotene Blick auf die Nacktheit at Düsseldorf's Museum Kunst Palast.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Edith Wharton published a collection of poems in 1909, the title poem of which was Artemis to Actaeon. The history of the Diane and Actéon Pas de Deux is complex and with all due trepidation (caveat quaerens) I refer to you to Wikipedia for information. The National Library of Australia has a photo of Rudolf Nureyev as Actaeon, while ballet.co has a series of stills from a performance at London's Coliseum theatre by Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo. There are innumerable versions on Youtube, all looking much the same apart from the costumes to this non-balletomane.

Actaeon - 15th to 17th centuries

Book III of the Metamorphoses continues with the story of Actaeon. We start our look at representations of this theme with a majolica dish dating from the 1490s and now in Bath's Holbourne Museum of Art, showing the story of Actaeon in the centre and the story of the Centaurs and the Lapiths around the rim. (photograph by HaSee released into the public domain via wikipedia)



The picture to the left is Louis Cranach the Elder's picture of Diana and Actaeon, from the first third of the 16th century. It is now in Connecticut's Wadsworth Athenaeum, but does not appear to be on their website.





















The two pictures of Actaeon above are both by Titian, the one on the left, called Diana Surprised by Actaeon, being earlier (1556-1559 -- now in The National Galleries of Scotland) and the one on the right, called The Death of Actaeon, being later (1565-1576 -- now in London's National Gallery). Lonely London Lad's song was inspired by the Diana Surprised by Actaeon, and the two paintings form the video accompaniment to this performance of the aria "Oft she visits this lov'd mountain" from Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas".















Moving on to the late 1580s and and early 1590s, the above left picture is by Bassano, (now in the Art Institute of Chicago) while a drawing by Spranger is now in New York's Metropolitan Museum. The above right picture is by Cesari (1603), and is now in Budapest's Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, but does not appear to be on their website.

A decade or so later, Joachim Anthoniesz Wtewael of the Netherlands produced Actaeon Watching Diana and Her Nymphs Bathing, now in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Dresden's Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (ninth picture down -- can't link any more closely) dates Albani's painting of Diana and Actaeon to before 1630. In 1634, Rembrandt combined the stories of Diana and Callisto and Diana and Actaeon in a single picture now in Anholt Castle in North Rhine-Westphalia (a tip of the hat to Judith Weingarten, who brought this to my attention in a comment on my second post about Callisto).

St. Petersburg's The Hermitage has Maratti's Landscape With Diana and Actaeon from the late 1660s, while Liechtenstein Castle takes us up to the 1690s with Franceschini's Diana and Acteon .

Backtracking slightly to 1684, the French composer Charpentier wrote a pastorale called Actéon, an extract from which can be viewed below.

Callisto -- Paintings

(Picture by Torsten Bronger via wikipedia, used under GNU Free Documentation License)

As I said in a previous post, Jupiter's attempt to seduce Callisto and the discovery of her pregnancy by Diana have proved the main focus in the story for artists. Earlier artists (in the 16th century) seem to have been more attracted to Diana's discovery of Callisto's pregnancy, while later artists (in the 18th century) seem to have been more attracted to Jupiter's attempt to seduce Callisto. The 17th century presents more of a mixture of these themes.

Dosso Dossi painted the incident in 1528. The painting is now in Rome's Galleria Borghese but does not seem to be on their website.








Below are two versions of the subject by Titian: the top one is from the late 1550s and is now in Edinburgh's National Gallery of Scotland while the bottom one is from 1566 and is now in Vienna's Kunsthistorische Museum.





Paul Bril painted a landscape with Diana and Callisto, probably in the 1620s, while in the late 1630s Hendrick Bloemart painted this version of the scene (right).









Left is a 17th century engraving by Gérard de Lairesse while below left is an engraving based on a picture from the 1740s by Jacopo Amigoni. Although many art poster and reproduction sites on the internet offer colour pictures, none of the ones I've looked at give any information as to where the original might be.











In the 17th century, Rubens had painted both Callisto in two scenes. His 1613 picture Jupiter and Callisto is now in the Staatliche Museen Kassel (but not on their website as far as I can see), and Diana and Callisto in 1640 (now in the Prado, probably on their site, but they seem to actively discourage linking).

Jacob de Wit's 1727 painting now in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum also shows Jupiter and Callisto.

François Boucher seems to have been particularly fond of the theme of Jupiter and Callisto. This 1744 example (below, top) is now in Moscow's Pushkin Museum (not in their online collection). New York's Metropolitan Museum has another painting dated 1763, while the Wallace Collection in London has a 1769 version. As a side note, some sites showing Boucher's Diana Leaving Her Bath (1742) (below, bottom) say that Diana's companion in the painting is Callisto, I don't know on what evidence. The Louvre's page on this picture says nothing about who she might be.





Richard Wilson painted a Landscape with Diana and Callisto (now in Liverpool's Lady Lever Gallery) in 1757. The reproduction on the gallery's website is rather small, but the text is very informative.

Slightly later than Boucher, Jean-Honore Fragonard produced a painting on this subject in 1778.
(Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations are public domain images from wikimedia commons.)

Callisto -- Introduction

To summarise the story of Callisto: Callisto was a companion of the virgin huntress, Diana. Jupiter saw her, and disguising himself as Diana, approached her. When he attempted to seduce her, she refused, and he raped her. She got pregnant but managed to conceal her pregnancy from Diana until the goddess decided to go swimming with her companions. Diana sent her away, and after Callisto had the baby, the jealous Juno turned her into a bear. Fifteen years later the child, a son called Arcas, was hunting when he came across a bear. Not realising it was his mother, he was about to stab the bear with her javelin when Jupiter prevented this matricide by turning them both into constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Still jealous, Juno asked her foster parents Oceanus and Tethys to refuse Callisto and Arcas permission to go down into the sea, and so the constellations always remain above the horizon. (photo of bear by Malene Thyssen used under GNU Free Documentation Licence)

Ovid's telling of the story in A. S. Kline's translation.

Artists seem to have focussed on two particular moments in the story of Callisto: Jupiter's attempted seduction in the form of Diana and the exposure of Callisto's pregnancy, and I'll be showing you some of those in future posts. But for now, here is Nicolaes Berchem's 1656 painting, Jupiter Notices Callisto (now in a private collection). (public domain image from Museum Syndicate)

The story inspired a 1651 opera "La Calisto" by Francesco Cavalli. The DVD shown is reviewed by Opera Today. YouTube has extracts, of course, and the one I've chosen shows Callisto's transformation into a bear.




Those in the right location might be interested to know that The Royal Opera House in London and The Portland Opera in Oregon will be performing this opera in their 2008/2009 seasons.