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)

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)

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)

Europa and the Bull

Ovid's next story (in Tony Kline's translation as usual), at the end of Book II, and somewhat cursorily finished off at the beginning of Book III, tells of Europa's abduction by Jupiter. Jupiter fell in love with Europa, a Phoenician princess. He took the form of a white bull and together with a herd of cattle he met the princess while she was playing on the beach. He coaxed her onto his back and splashed about in the shallows, and then headed out to sea with her on his back, taking her to Crete. (Robert Scarth's picture of bull via wikimedia commons, used under creative commons licence 2.5)

This story has inspired an overwhelming number of artists, so I'll divide my exploration of this theme into a number of posts.

Let's start with two works from the 15th century. Bartolomeo Bellano or Vellano sculpted this bronze of Europa and the Bull in the 1480s or 1490s (now in Florence's Museo Nazionale del Bargello but not on their website). Another bronze possibly by Andrea Briosco (aka Il Ricco) is now in Budapest's Szépművészeti Múzeum.

Dürer's 1490 sketch for this subject is now in Vienna's Albertina museum, but again not on their website as far as I can see.



This 1560 picture by Titian is now in Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Veronese painted two versions of Europa and the Bull, the one shown below is in London's National Gallery, the other is in the Doge's palace in Venice.

(Both illustrations in the public domain, the Titian via wiki commons media, the Veronese via Museum Syndicate.)

Mercury, Aglauros and Herse

You may remember from the story of Coronis that on its way to tell Apollo about Coronis's infidelity, the raven met a crow. The crow told the raven how she had similarly told Minerva about the disobedience of Aglauros, who persuaded her sisters to open a basket in defiance of Minerva's orders. The basket contained a child and a snake, or in other versions of the story, a child with a snake's tail, and the three sisters went mad and threw themselves off the Acropolis. In Ovid's version, however, although the tittle-tattle crow is punished by being turned black (before that crows were white), the sisters remain unscathed. But Minerva remembers.

Later Mercury falls in love with Herse, one of Aglauros's sisters. He comes for a visit, and meets Aglauros, who agrees to help him -- for a price. Minerva is horrified that this woman who disobeyed her will be in Mercury's good books and will be rich as well. Minerva goes to Envy and asks her to touch Aglauros, who then, envying her sister's good fortune, tries to bar Mercury's way. Mercury turns her to stone. Tony Kline's translation of Ovid's version of the story.



Let's look first at pictures of Aglauros and her sisters with Erichthonius (aka Erechtheus), the child with the snake or snake's tail. I haven't been able to find the whereabouts of the upper picture, painted in 1620 by Jasper van der Laanen, although it was sold at auction quite recently. The slightly later picture (1635-40) below it is by Jacob Jordaens (now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). Rubens also painted a picture on this theme just before van der Laanen (now in the Liechtenstein Museum).

The moment when Mercury, flying over Attica, first sees Herse has proved popular with artists. Jacob Pynas, who painted Mercury and Battus, also painted Mercury and Herse at around the same time in 1618 (painting now in Florence's Uffizi Gallery but not on their website). Thomas Blanchet's Mercury and Herse (1650) is now in the Portland Art Museum where its provenance is currently under investigation to see whether it was looted during the Second World War. Jan or Johann Boeckhorst also painted a Mercury and Hermes in the early 1650s (now in Vienna's Kunsthistorische Museum) Gerard Hoet's Mercury and Herse (1710) is now in Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum.

More unusually, Karel Dujardin painted this 1652 picture of Minerva visiting Envy (now in Vienna's Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildende Künste, but not as far as I can tell on its website).

Veronese painted a picture of Aglauros blocking Mercury's way to Herse in the late 1570s or early 1580s (now in Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum). Carel Fabritius painted the picture on the right, which shows Aglauros blocking Mercury's way (1646, now in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts). (The two pictures above are in the public domain from wikipedia, the one on the right is also in the public domain and is from museumsyndicate)