Perseus in the Renaissance

For those who enjoyed my series of posts on Perseus, H. Niyazi has a recent post on The Three Pipe Problem discussing the portrayal of Perseus in Renaissance Art.

Perseus and Phineus

Ovid starts Book V of the Metamorphoses by continuing the story of Perseus. Phineus, who had been betrothed to Andromeda, starts a fight at Perseus and Andromeda's wedding feast. In my post Perseus and Andromeda: the 17th Century I embedded part of a TV production of Lully's Persée. Here is Phineus' petrification scene from a sound recording of the same opera:



The picture shown to accompany the sound recording above is Luca Giordano's painting from the early 1680s Perseus Turning Phineus and His Followers to Stone, now in London's National Gallery.

Towards the end of the first decade of the eighteenth century, Sebastiano Ricci painted Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa, which is now in Los Angeles's Getty Center. Jean-Marc Nattier's 1718 Perseus, Aided by Minerva, Petrifies Phineus and His Companions by Showing Them Medusa's Head is now in Tours's Musée des Beaux Arts.

Perseus and Medusa: the 19th century and after

Last time we looked at Perseus and Medusa in the 16th and 17th centuries. I haven't found anything in the 18th century, so moving on to the 19th century, the 1806 statue on the left is by Canova and now in New York's Metropolitan Museum. An earlier version of this statue is in the Vatican Museum, but not on their website. (image used by permission of metmuseum.org)









George Watts sculpted a head of Medusa while visiting Florence in the 1840s. It is now in Compton's Watts Gallery (there doesn't seem to be any way of linking directly to the page, so you'll have to search for Medusa). (public domain image from museumsyndicate.com)



Arnold Bocklin painted this picture of Medusa in 1878 or thereabouts. It is now in a private collection.



Maximilian Pirner painted the top painting of Medusa in 1891, while Carlos Schwabe painted his Medusa in 1895 I have not been able to find either's present location, so I assume they are both in private collections.



Jacek Malczewski painted this Medusa in 1900. It is now in the Lviv Art Gallery, which does not seem to have a website.

Vincenzo Gemito produced a relief head of Medusa in 1911, which is now in Los Angeles's Getty Center.

To finish off with here is a rather nice cartoon version of the story of Perseus and Medusa produced by ABC and the University of Melbourne. (all images are in the public domain and come from wikicommons unless otherwise credited)

Perseus and Medusa: the 16th and 17th centuries

After Perseus defeats the sea monster and rescues Andromeda, the Ethiopians hold a feast in his honour and he tells the story of how he defeated Medusa.



Benvenuto Cellini's famous statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa is in Florence and dates from 1545-1554. John Singer Sargent produced a series of sketches and paintings of the statue, two of which are shown below, in the first decade of the 20th century. The upper picture is now in Washington's National Gallery of Art, and the lower picture is in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (but not on their website). For more on Sargent's pictures of the statue see this site.




Youtube has a short slideshow of photos of Cellini's work taken from various angles:





The above painting of the head of Medusa on a shield is by Caravaggio. Painted in 1596, it is now in Florence's Uffizi Gallery (scroll down). Caravaggio painted another version of the same picture a year or so later which is now in a private collection and not online that I can see. Caravaggio's painting is discussed in this Guardian article.



Painted about the same time, and also now in the Uffizi is this painting by an unknown Flemish artist. For a long time it was thought to be one of the paintings of Medusa Leonardo Da Vinci is known to have painted but which have been lost. It served as the inspiration a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley (dialogic hypertext here).



The above picture of Medusa's head was painted in 1617-1618 by Rubens and is now in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. It is discussed in detail here.



Bernini produced a bust of Medusa in the 1640s, which is now in Rome's Musei Capitolini, where it is currently undergoing restoration.



Maffei's picture of Perseus Cutting off Medusa's Head (above) was painted in 1650 and is now in Venice's Gallerie dell'Accademia, but is not on their website. (all images are in the public domain and come from wikicommons)

Perseus and Andromeda: The 20th century and After

We conclude our look at interpretations of the story of Perseus and Andromeda with a couple of examples from the 20th century.

Odilon Redon's 1912 picture of Andromeda is now in Little Rock's Arkansas Art Center.

In 1921 Jacques Ibert wrote an opera about Perseus and Andromeda.

The Ray Harryhausen 1981 stop-motion film about Perseus and Andromeda, Clash of the Titans, is being remade, with the new version due out in March 2010. The trailer for the original can be seen below, and of course there are various excerpts on YouTube.

Perseus and Andromeda: The 19th century

We turn now to the 19th century in our exploration of the story of Perseus and Andromeda.



Ingres's painting shown above was painted around about 1819. It is now in a private collection. (used under creative commons licence, courtesy of www.jeanaugustedominiqueingres.org)



In 1840 Theodore Chasseriau produced the painting above, which is now in Paris's Louvre. (public domain picture from commons.wikimedia.org)



Eugene Delacroix's Andromeda was painted in 1852. It is now in Houston's Museum of Fine Arts but does not appear to be on their website. (used under creative commons licence, courtesy of www.eugenedelacroix.org)





Two artists painted Andromeda in 1869. The upper picture is by Gustave Dore. I haven't been able to find out its present whereabouts, so I assume it's probably in a private collection somewhere. The lower picture is by Edward Poynter and is now in London's Tate Britain. (both pictures are in the public domain and come from commons.wikimedia.org)



Around the same time Gustave Moreau produced the above picture, which is now in the Bristol City Gallery, but not on their website. (public domain picture from www.the-athenaeum.org))



Lord Frederic Leighton's picture dates to 1891 and is now in Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery. (public domain picture from www.museumsyndicate.com)

Perseus and Andromeda: The 18th century

We continue our exploration of the theme of Perseus and Andromeda, moving into the 18th century with a picture painted in 1723 by François Lemoyne and now in London's The Wallace Collection. A few years later in 1727 Charles-Antoine Coypel also painted Perseus Rescuing Andromeda, which is now in Paris's Louvre. It is not on the Louvre's website, but can be seen in the Joconde database of artworks belonging to the French government. (wikicommons starmap by Roberto Mura used under creative commons licence)



In 1726, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni returned to Venice from political exile. In honour of the occasion a serenata called Andromeda Liberata was commissioned and performed only to languish thereafter till it was rediscovered in 2002. It is a matter of some musicological dispute whether the serenata was composed by one musician or several, but it is certain that one of the arias, Sovvente il sole, was written by Antonio Vivaldi. The above YouTube extract has the finale from a 2006 performance in Cremona. The New York Times has a background piece to the manuscript's discovery.

In 1730, Tiepolo painted a picture now in New York's Frick Collection, as a study for a ceiling fresco now lost due to WWII bombing.



Anton Raphael Mengs produced the above picture in 1774-1777. It is now in St. Petersburg's State Hermitage. (public domain picture from wikicommons)



Lastly, in 1787 Michael Haydn (brother of the more famous Joseph) wrote an opera, "Andromeda und Perseus", an aria from which can be heard in the YouTube video embedded above.

Perseus and Andromeda: The 17th century

In the early 1600s Carlo Saraceni, inspired by Giorgio Vasari's Perseus and Andromeda, which we looked at in my previous post, produced the picture below of Andromeda in Chains, which is now in Dijon's Musée des Beaux-Arts, but not on their website.(the picture of coral on the left was produced by the United States National Oceanic and Atmpospheric Administration and is thus in the public domain. From wikicommons)



In 1610 Mozzarone painted a picture of Andromeda which is now in Florence's Uffizi Gallery.



Another similar painting by Joachim Wtewael shown above, dates from 1611 and is now in Paris's Louvre.







Rubens painted three versions of Perseus and Andromeda. The top picture is in St. Petersburg's State Hermitage while the middle picture is in Berlin's Gemälde Galerie Kulturforum, but not on their website. They were both painted in 1620 or 1621, while the bottom picture was one he was working on when he died in 1640 and is now in Madrid's Prado (direct link to picture not possible).



At about the same time as Rubens was painting the first two of his pictures of Perseus, Lully was composing an opera about Perseus and Andromeda: Persée, the opening of a recent TV production of which can be seen in the above embedded YouTube video. Other parts of this production are also available on YouTube.



Around 1630 Rembrandt painted the above picture, which is now in the Hague's Mauritshuis (scroll down).




The tapestry shown above was designed by Francis Cleyn and made from 1635-1645. It is now in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, but is not on their website.



The above 1679 painting by Pierre Mignard is now in Paris's Louvre.



Also in the Louvre are the above 1678-1684 statue of Perseus and Andromeda by Pierre Puget and a 1671 drawing by Claude Lorrain, depicting not Perseus's rescue of Andromeda but the creation of coral from seaweed by Medusa's head while Perseus is washing his hands in the sea after killing the monster. The drawing was preparation for the painting below, now in a private collection. (Picture of statue in the public domain according to museumsyndicate.com, picture below used under creative commons licence)



We'll finish this look at the 17th century with a 17th century copy of Guido Reni's 1635 Perseus and Andromeda in London's National Gallery (the original is in the Pallavicini collection in Rome, but not on their website) and a 1638 picture in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which may or may not be by Anthony van Dyck. It serves as the hook for this article from the Los Angeles Times on the re-attribution of works of art. (pictures not otherwise credited are in the public domain and come from wikicommons)

Perseus and Andromeda: The 16th century

In my previous post, we looked at Burne-Jones's series of pictures based on the stories of Perseus, but now let's look at art based on the story of Perseus and Andromeda in more detail. It was a very popular subject(damsels in distress who are suffering from a variety of wardrobe malfunctions sold well we must assume), so again we'll take it century by century, starting in the 16th century. (Wikicommons picture of the constellation Perseus by Torsten Bronger. Used under GNU Free Documentation Licence.)



This picture was painted by Piero di Cosimo around 1513 and is now in Florence's Uffizi Gallery.

Around 1524 Nicola da Urbino created a dinner service for Isabella d'Este, duchess of Mantua, decorated with scenes from the Metamorphoses. The one showing Perseus and Andromeda is now in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.



In the mid 1550s Titian painted the above picture, which is now in London's The Wallace Collection.



This painting from 1570 is by Vasari and is now in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. 10 years later Veronese painted Perseus Rescuing Andromeda, which is now in Rennes's Musée des Beaux-Arts.



Our last painting from the 16th century was painted in 1593 to 1594 by the Cavaliere d'Arpino (aka Giuseppe Cesari). It is now in the St. Louis Art Museum. (Unless stated otherwise, all pictures are taken from wikicommons where they are said to be in the public domain)

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.