Persephone: the 18th and 19th centuries

Having looked at Persephone in the 16th and 17th centuries, we now turn to 18th and 19th centuries.

Our first picture, Psyche Obtaining the Elixir of Beauty from Proserpine is by Charles Joseph Natoire and dates from around 1735. It is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.



In 1866 Swinburne wrote a poem called The Garden of Proserpine, an extract from which, accompanied by animations, appears in the above video.

In 1874 Dante Gabriel Rosetti painted the above picture of Persephone with a pomegranate, now in London's Tate Gallery.

Lord Frederic Leighton chose an unusual moment form the legend to paint in his 1891 "The Return of Persephone", now in Leeds Art Gallery. (all images in this post are in the public domain and come from wikicommons)

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.

Persephone: The 16th century

Next in Ovid's Metamorphoses is the story of Proserpine, or as she is better known under her Greek name, Persephone. Paintings of Persephone in the 16th century concentrated on the Rape of Persephone ("rape" here meaning kidnapping). (picture of pomegranate from wikicommons used under creative commons licence. Other images are in the public domain and also come from wikicommons.)



Our first picture was painted by Niccolò dell'Abbate, probably shortly before his death in 1571. The painting is now in the Louvre. At about the same time Christoph Schwarz was producing a Rape of Proserpine, now in Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum.



Paris Bordone must have painted his Rape of Proserpine some time before this as he died in 1571. The painting is now in Milan's Galleria Salomon (scroll down).



In 1581 Hans von Aachen painted the above Rape of Persephone, which is now in Sibiu's Brukenthal Palace. In 1598 Joseph Heintz the Elder painted a Rape of Prosperine, which is now in Dresden's Gemaldegalerie. Unfortunately, their online presence is in Second Life and so inaccessible to me as I'm not a member.