Perseus and Andromeda: The 17th century

In the early 1600s Carlo Saraceni, inspired by Giorgio Vasari's Perseus and Andromeda, which we looked at in my previous post, produced the picture below of Andromeda in Chains, which is now in Dijon's Musée des Beaux-Arts, but not on their website.(the picture of coral on the left was produced by the United States National Oceanic and Atmpospheric Administration and is thus in the public domain. From wikicommons)



In 1610 Mozzarone painted a picture of Andromeda which is now in Florence's Uffizi Gallery.



Another similar painting by Joachim Wtewael shown above, dates from 1611 and is now in Paris's Louvre.







Rubens painted three versions of Perseus and Andromeda. The top picture is in St. Petersburg's State Hermitage while the middle picture is in Berlin's Gemälde Galerie Kulturforum, but not on their website. They were both painted in 1620 or 1621, while the bottom picture was one he was working on when he died in 1640 and is now in Madrid's Prado (direct link to picture not possible).



At about the same time as Rubens was painting the first two of his pictures of Perseus, Lully was composing an opera about Perseus and Andromeda: Persée, the opening of a recent TV production of which can be seen in the above embedded YouTube video. Other parts of this production are also available on YouTube.



Around 1630 Rembrandt painted the above picture, which is now in the Hague's Mauritshuis (scroll down).




The tapestry shown above was designed by Francis Cleyn and made from 1635-1645. It is now in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, but is not on their website.



The above 1679 painting by Pierre Mignard is now in Paris's Louvre.



Also in the Louvre are the above 1678-1684 statue of Perseus and Andromeda by Pierre Puget and a 1671 drawing by Claude Lorrain, depicting not Perseus's rescue of Andromeda but the creation of coral from seaweed by Medusa's head while Perseus is washing his hands in the sea after killing the monster. The drawing was preparation for the painting below, now in a private collection. (Picture of statue in the public domain according to museumsyndicate.com, picture below used under creative commons licence)



We'll finish this look at the 17th century with a 17th century copy of Guido Reni's 1635 Perseus and Andromeda in London's National Gallery (the original is in the Pallavicini collection in Rome, but not on their website) and a 1638 picture in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which may or may not be by Anthony van Dyck. It serves as the hook for this article from the Los Angeles Times on the re-attribution of works of art. (pictures not otherwise credited are in the public domain and come from wikicommons)

Danae: the 17th Century

We start our look at Danae in the 17th century with a painting from the first years of the century by Joachim Wtewael called "Jupiter Entering Danae's Room", which is now in Paris's Louvre.



At around the same time, in 1603, Hendrick Goltzius painted the above picture, which is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.




The two paintings above were painted a daughter and her father. The upper painting dates to 1612 and was painted by Artemisia Gentileschi and is now in the Saint Louis Art Museum, while the lower painting was painted in 1621 by her father Orazio Gentileschi and is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art



Rembrandt worked on the above painting of Danae from 1636-1647. It is now in St. Petersburg's State Hermitage, where it was attacked with acid by a lunatic in 1985, and then carefully restored. (all images come from wikicommons and are in the public domain)

Actaeon - 15th to 17th centuries

Book III of the Metamorphoses continues with the story of Actaeon. We start our look at representations of this theme with a majolica dish dating from the 1490s and now in Bath's Holbourne Museum of Art, showing the story of Actaeon in the centre and the story of the Centaurs and the Lapiths around the rim. (photograph by HaSee released into the public domain via wikipedia)



The picture to the left is Louis Cranach the Elder's picture of Diana and Actaeon, from the first third of the 16th century. It is now in Connecticut's Wadsworth Athenaeum, but does not appear to be on their website.





















The two pictures of Actaeon above are both by Titian, the one on the left, called Diana Surprised by Actaeon, being earlier (1556-1559 -- now in The National Galleries of Scotland) and the one on the right, called The Death of Actaeon, being later (1565-1576 -- now in London's National Gallery). Lonely London Lad's song was inspired by the Diana Surprised by Actaeon, and the two paintings form the video accompaniment to this performance of the aria "Oft she visits this lov'd mountain" from Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas".















Moving on to the late 1580s and and early 1590s, the above left picture is by Bassano, (now in the Art Institute of Chicago) while a drawing by Spranger is now in New York's Metropolitan Museum. The above right picture is by Cesari (1603), and is now in Budapest's Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, but does not appear to be on their website.

A decade or so later, Joachim Anthoniesz Wtewael of the Netherlands produced Actaeon Watching Diana and Her Nymphs Bathing, now in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Dresden's Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (ninth picture down -- can't link any more closely) dates Albani's painting of Diana and Actaeon to before 1630. In 1634, Rembrandt combined the stories of Diana and Callisto and Diana and Actaeon in a single picture now in Anholt Castle in North Rhine-Westphalia (a tip of the hat to Judith Weingarten, who brought this to my attention in a comment on my second post about Callisto).

St. Petersburg's The Hermitage has Maratti's Landscape With Diana and Actaeon from the late 1660s, while Liechtenstein Castle takes us up to the 1690s with Franceschini's Diana and Acteon .

Backtracking slightly to 1684, the French composer Charpentier wrote a pastorale called Actéon, an extract from which can be viewed below.