Coriolanus

I have written before about the life of Coriolanus as told by Livy and Plutarch and about Shakespeare's use of Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus. Irene Hahn of Roman History Books and More has written about Coriolanus in the arts, something I'd like to expand on.

Some time between 1495 and 1510 Michele da Verona painted Coriolanus Persuaded By His Family To Spare Rome, which is now in London's National Gallery. Towards the end of that period Luca Signorelli painted a fresco with the same title, also now in the National Gallery.

In the first half of the 17th century Nicolaus Knupfer produced a drawing of Coriolanus Receiving Roman Matrons, which is now in the British Museum. In the second quarter of the 17th century Bartolomeo Biscaino produced a painting of , which was sold in 2005, presumably to a private collection.



Poussin produced the above picture, Coriolanus Supplicated by His Mother, in 1650. It is now in Les Andelys's Musée Nicolas Poussin. (image from aiwaz.net used by permission)

Filippo Abbiati's picture Coriolanus Persuaded By His Family To Raise the Siege of Rome was painted in 1661 and is now in a private collection after being sold in 1996. In 1674 Gerbrand van den Eeckhout painted "Volumnia Before Coriolanus", now in Oregon's Portland Art Museum (it can be seen in this gallery view directly underneath the gallery name on the wall).



Around 1730, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted the above picture of Coriolanus, which is now in St. Petersburg's State Hermitage. (public domain picture from arthermitage.org)

In the 1780s, Giuseppe Bernadino Bison drew a picture of Coriolanus and the women of Rome which is now in Washington's National Gallery of Art.

In 1831 Jacques-Raymond Brascassat painted a more rural view of Coriolanus and his mother, now in the Monte Carlo Museum (scroll down to the bottom of the page).




In 1860 George Frederick Watts produced this study for a fresco in Bowood House. I have not been able to track down the location of the study so I assume it's in a private collection. More studies can be seen at London's Watts Gallery (search for Coriolanus). (public domain image from museumsyndicate.com)




The above statue of Virgilia by Thomas Woolner was produced in 1871 and is in Strawberry Hill, London. (wikimedia image used under GNU Free Documentation Licence)

Lucretia: The 16th Century

Chapter IV in Saylor's book deals with the end of Rome's regal period and the beginnings of the Republic. The part of this story that has most inspired artists is the story of the rape of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, the nephew of Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last king of Rome, and her subsequent suicide. Scenes from the story can be seen in almost strip cartoon fashion in the two pictures below. The upper picture was painted in 1500 by Botticelli, and is now in Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The lower picture was painted in 1528 by Breu the Elder and is now in Munich's Alte Pinakothek but not on their website.





This 1518 picture of Lucreitia's Suicide by Durer is also now in Munich's Alte Pinakothek, but not on their website.



Lorenzo Lotto's 1530-32 picture shown below is actually called a Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia. It is now in London's National Gallery.



Cranach the Elder seems to have been very fond of the subject of Lucretia. According to Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, his workshop produced dozens of pictures on this theme. One can be seen below, with others in Vienna's Liechtenstein Museum (3rd picture down), Nizhny Novgorod's Art Museum (scroll down and click on middle thumbnail in the bottom row), and Helsinki's Finnish National Gallery.




Titian painted two pictures of Lucretia. The earlier one, painted in 1515, shows Lucretia with her husband trying to restrain her from committing suicide, and is now in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, while the later one (shown below), painted in 1571 near the end of Titian's life, shows the rape. The picture is in Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, whose website has a detailed discussion of the painting.



Veronese painted Lucretia's suicide in 1580. The picture (shown below) is also in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum (scroll down and click on leftmost thumbnail in the bottom row).



Let's close this look at Lucretia in the 16th century with the 1592 publication of Shakespeare's poem, The Rape of Lucrece. (all illustrations are from wiki commons and are in the public domain)

Pyramus and Thisbe

As we move on into Book IV of Ovid's "Metamorphoses", Arsippe, one of the daughters of Minyas, tells Ovid's next story, Pyramus and Thisbe, a pair of lovers in Babylon whose parents forbid their marriage. They only way they can meet is by peering and whispering through a hole in the wall between their houses. They plan to elope. Thisbe arrives first at Ninus's tomb, their rendezvous point, but is scared by a lioness. She runs away, leaving behind her veil, which the lioness plays with. Pyramus sees the lioness's tracks and the torn veil. Convinced that Thisbe has been eaten he stabs himself. Thisbe returns to find his dead body and stabs herself in turn. Their blood spurting up dyes the berries on a nearby mulberry tree red. If all this sounds familiar, there are obvious parallels with the story of Romeo and Juliet, and it is also the "lamentable comedy" performed by the mechanicals in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream". (Sten Porse's picture of mulberry from wikicommons used under creative commons 2.5 licence)

Of the two pictures below, the first, painted in 1520, is by Niklaus Manuel Deutsch and is now in Basel's Kunstmuseum (direct linking to the picture is not possible). The second picture, by Hans Baldung was painted in 1530 and is now in Berlin's Staatliche Museen (click on the link below the picture on the museum's site for descriptive text).




Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery has a painting of Pyramus and Thisbe by Dughet from the late 1650s, slightly later than the 1651 painting by Poussin shown below, which is now in Frankfurt's Städelsches Kunstinstitut (the image on the museum's page only shows the top half of the painting, go to zoom to see the whole thing).




In the last years of the 17th century, Abraham Hondius also painted Pyramus and Thisbe and his version is now in Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.

At the beginning of the 20th century John William Waterhouse painted this picture called Thisbe or The Listener, now in a private collection.


And now, from YouTube is Shakespeare's version, with the characters played by The Beatles:


(all reproductions of paintings come from wikicommons and are in the public domain)