25 October 2010

Spiderwoman

Book VI of the Metamorphoses opens with the story of Arachne. (picture from wikicommons by galak76, used by permission under creative commons licence)



Arachne appears in a fresco painted by Francesco del Cossa in the Palazzo Schifanoia in the late 1460s. Although the Palazzo doesn’t seem to have a website, you can see the fresco in situ in the following video, where it appears about 25 seconds in.






At some point between 1475 and 1485 Tintoretto painted the above painting of Athene and Arachne, which is now in Florence’s Galleria degli Uffizi, but does not appear to be on their website.




The above fresco of Arachne by Veronese dates from 1520 and is in Venice’s Palazzo Ducale.
 


Another fresco of Arachne was painted by Herman Posthumus in 1542 and is from the Landshut Stadtresidentz, but does not appear to be on the Stadresidentz’s website.



Ruben’s version of the story of Arachne, painted 1636-7, is now in Richmond’s Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.



Perhaps the most famous representation of the story of Arachne and Minerva is this painting from 1657 by Velázquez, now in Madrid’s Prado.



The above picture from the Iconos site is a 1695 painting by Giordano and is now in El Escorial, but is not on its website, or indeed anywhere else that I can find. (unless stated otherwise all images in this post are from wikicommons and in the public domain)

6 comments:

Unknown said...

great post!!

Very interesting rwmg! The way you look at recurrent themes spanning genres is very much the way I look at the history of art as well :)

H

RWMG said...

Gracias, taio.

Anonymous said...

This is a great post. I love the Veronese interpretation of the myth. It might by the simplest, but to me it says the most.

Thanks for posting this!

RWMG said...

Thanks for the comment, venividirisihistory. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Ehatsumi said...

the myth about Arachne and Athena/Minerva is one of my fave! I am impressed by the paintings, and thanks to you I've seen such collection! :)

RWMG said...

Glad you enjoyed it, Ehatsumi.