Persephone: the 17th century

In my last post we looked at the story of Persephone in the 16th century, when the rape (i.e., kidnapping) of Persephone was a popular theme from the story. We now move on to the 17th century, looking first at pictures of the rape and then a few pictures of Persephone in the underworld.

In the first decade of the century, Hendrik van Balen painted Pluto and Persephone, which is now in the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.



Bernini's 1621-1622 statue of Pluto and Proserpina is now in Rome's Galleria Borghese. (public domain image from Museum Syndicate)



Rembrandt painted the above Rape of Persephone in 1631, which is Berlin's Gemäldegalerie, but does not appear to be on their website.



Pignoni's 1650 above L'Enlèvement de Proserpine is now in Nancy's Musée des Beaux-Arts.



In the early 1680s Giordano painted a series of oil studies or modelli which are now in London's National Gallery. These were preparation for a series of frescoes in Florence's Palazzo Medici Riccardi, one of which, showing the rape of Proserpina, is shown above.



Turning to the theme of Persephone in the underworld, the above detail from a 1622 picture of Hell by François de Nomé. The complete picture is now in Besançon's Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie.(image used under creative commons licence, courtesy of baroque-in-art.org) Paris's Louvre has a painting of Orpheus before Pluto and Persephone by Perrier and dating from 1647-1650. (unless otherwise ascribed, all images in this post are in the public domain and come from wikicommons)

To finish this look at Persephone in the 17th century here is an extract from the overture to Lully's opera Proserpina. YouTube also has extracts from Act III amongst the related videos.

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)

Salmacis and Hermaphroditus

Ovid's next story is told by Alcithoe. After rejecting other possibilities she settles on the story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. Hermaphroditus was a beautiful young man who a nymph called Salmacis fell in love with. He rejected her advances and then believing himself alone again decided to go for a swim in a pool. Salmacis fell even more in love when she saw his naked body and wrapping her arms round him in the pool she prayed to the gods that they might never be parted. The gods granted her prayers by making them one composite being, both male and female -- hence our word hermaphrodite.


The above 1510 picture by Gossaert, otherwise known as Mabuse, is from Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans-van Bueningen, but does not appear to be on their website. The picture below by Spranger dates back to 1581 and is now in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. A few years later in 1585, Scarsella, otherwise known as Scarsellino also painted a picture of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, now in Rome's Galleria Borghese, but not on their site.



This news report of Christie's activities in 2006 is illustrated by a photo of Lodovico Carracci's Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, which probably dates from the last decade of the 16th century (further details and another photo here).

The two pictures below date from the first decade of the 17th century. The upper one is by Badalocchio and is now in Rome's Galleria Pallavicini, while the lower one is by Carlo Saraceni and is now in Naples's Galleria di Capodimonte, but neither appears to be on its gallery's website.



At about the same time the poet and playwright Francis Beaumont (of Beaumont and Fletcher fame) was writing an epyllion or short epic poem on the subject of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus.

Wtenbrouck's 1627 picture, Wooded Pool With Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, is now in The Hague's Mauritshuis.

Albani painted two paintings on the theme of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus: one, dating from the 1630s is in Paris's Louvre, while the other (shown below), from about 1660, is in Oldenburg's Landesmuseum, but again not on their website.



Moving on to the 19th century, François-Joseph Navez painted the picture of the Nymph Salmacis and Hermaphroditus below in 1829, and it is now in Ghent's Museum voor Schone Kunsten.



Another poet, Swinburne, wrote a poem called Hermaphroditus, and dated it Au Musée du Louvre, Mars 1863. He was presumably inspired by this statue in the Louvre. The statue itself is from the 2nd century AD but the mattress for it was carved in 1619 by Bernini.


You can see images from an undated, but presumably quite recent, film about Salmacis and Hermaphroditus.

The modern Australian artist Josonia Palaitis has painted a series of works based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, one of which shows Salmacis and Hermaphroditus.