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Changing Paintings: Summary and contents parts 1-18

This is the first of four articles providing brief summaries and contents for this series of paintings telling myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and covers parts 1-18, from the start to the fall of the house of Thebes.

About Ovid and his life; his other writings, and his banishment. References.

Introduction

vanhaarlemfalltitans
Cornelis van Haarlem (1562–1638), The Fall of the Titans (1588-90), oil on canvas, 239 x 307, Statens Museum for Kunst (Den Kongelige Malerisamling), Copenhagen, Denmark. Wikimedia Commons.

The aim of the Metamorphoses, about telling tales of bodies changed into new forms. The origin of the world from chaos, through a summary of pre-history and the fall of the Titans. Lycaon transformed into a wolf by Jupiter. Jupiter’s proposal to destroy humanity.

1 Creation and Lycaon’s cannibalism

delacroixapollovanquishingpython
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), Apollo Vanquishing the Python (1850-1851), mural, 800 x 750 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

The flood, and its survivors Deucalion and Pyrrha. Stones turned into men and women of the next generation. Apollo destroys the Python, and institutes the Pythian Games.

2 The flood and the Python

tiepoloapollodaphne
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), Apollo and Daphne (c 1744-45), oil on canvas, 96 x 79 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Apollo inflamed with love for Daphne, and his attempt to rape her. Daphne saved by transformation into the laurel.

3 Daphne becomes the laurel

rubensjunoargus
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Juno and Argus (c 1611), oil on canvas, 249 × 296 cm, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Jupiter’s rape of Io, and her transformation into a white cow. Detected by Juno, who puts Argus to keep a watch on her. Inset story of Pan’s attempt to rape Syrinx, who is transformed into reeds. Mercury kills Argus, whose eyes decorate the peacock. Io as a cow driven to Egypt, and there returned to human form, to be worshipped as a goddess.

4 Io as a cow, the eyes of Argus, and Syrinx

moreauphaethon
Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), The Fall of Phaëthon (1878), watercolor, highlight and pencil on paper, 99 x 65 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Phaëthon son of Phoebus persuades his father to let him drive the sun chariot. Disaster strikes, Phaëthon is killed after much of the earth is burned by the sun. His sisters transformed into poplar trees, and their tears into amber. His friend transformed into a swan.

5 Fall of Phaëthon

Callisto raped by Jupiter in the form of Diana, cast out from Diana’s followers, and transformed by Juno into a bear. Jupiter transforms Callisto and their son into the constellations of the Great and Little Bears.

6 Callisto victimised

The white raven turned to black for telling on others. Minerva leaves a basket containing the infant Ericthonius with Aglauros, who discovers the basket also contains a snake. The crow downgraded in the order of birds for reporting that to Minerva. Apollo kills his unfaithful lover Coronis, but rescues his unborn child, who becomes Aesculapius.

7 Gossip and the death of Coronis

Mercury’s theft of Apollo’s cattle, and Battus turned to stone. Mercury’s love for Herse, and her jealous sister Aglauros turned to stone.

8 Aglauros turned into stone

rubensrapeofeuropa
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), The Rape of Europa (copy of Titian’s original) (1628-29), 182.5 × 201.5 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Wikimedia Commons.
vallottonrapeeuropa
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), The Rape of Europa (1908), oil on canvas, 130 x 162 cm, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland. Wikimedia Commons.

Jupiter in the form of a bull abducts and rapes Europa.

9 The abduction of Europa

goltziuscadmus
Hendrik Goltzius (1558–1617), Cadmus Slays the Dragon (1573-1617), oil on canvas, 189 x 248 cm, Museet på Koldinghus (Deposit of the Statens Kunstsamlinger), København, Denmark. Wikimedia Commons.

Europa’s brother Cadmus directed to found a city. His men devoured by a monster, who is killed by Cadmus’ javelin. He sows the dragon’s teeth, which grow into warriors, who help Cadmus found Thebes.

10 Cadmus and the founding of Thebes

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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875), Diana and Actaeon (1836), oil on canvas, 156.5 × 112.7 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Cadmus’ grandson Actaeon stumbles into Diana when hunting. He’s transformed into a stag, and killed by his own dogs.

11 Actaeon changed into a stag

moreaujupitersemele
Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), Jupiter and Semele (1895), oil on canvas, 212 x 118 cm, Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Jupiter gets Semele pregnant, and she insists on him revealing himself to her in his full divine glory. She is consumed by flames, and her unborn baby is sewn into Jupiter’s thigh to be born as the god Bacchus.

12 Death of Semele and Jupiter’s surrogate pregnancy

caravaggionarcissus
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) (1571–1610), Narcissus (1594-96), oil on canvas, 110 × 92 cm, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome. Wikimedia Commons.

Tiresias changed from man to woman, then back again. Blinded by Juno as punishment, but given prophetic powers by Jupiter. Echo too loquacious for Juno, so her speech is limited to repeating the words of others. Echo falls in love with Narcissus, but he falls in love with his own reflection, dies and is transformed into narcissus flowers.

13 Echo and Narcissus

Pentheus warned to worship Bacchus, but he defies the god’s cult, and is torn limb from limb by his own mother and sisters, as foreseen by Tiresias.

14 Death of Pentheus

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Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Landscape during a Thunderstorm with Pyramus and Thisbe (1651), oil on canvas, 274 × 191 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Two lovers meet outside their city, but she arrives first and flees from a lioness. He sees her shawl bloodied by the lioness, assumes his lover is dead, and kills himself with his own sword. His blood changes the colour of mulberry fruit from white to red. She finds him dying, and kills herself.

15 Pyramus and Thisbe

The adultery of Venus and Mars. How the Sun was first to witness that. In revenge for the Sun telling Vulcan of her adultery, Venus makes the Sun fall in love with Leucothoë and rape her. Her father buries her alive, and she’s transformed into a frankincense tree. Clytie’s unrequited love for the Sun, leading to her transformation into a sunflower.

16 Adultery and Unrequited love

The nymph Salmacis desires Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, but he won’t oblige. They are transformed into a single body, both man and woman.

17 Hermaphroditus

demorgancadmusharmonia
Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919), Cadmus and Harmonia (1877), oil, dimensions not known, The De Morgan Collection, England. Wikimedia Commons.

Summary of the fall of the house of Cadmus, founder of Thebes. Juno seeks vengeance on Ino by summoning the Fates from the underworld to drive Ino’s husband Athamas mad. He kills one of their infant sons, she leaps from a cliff with the other in her arms. Venus intervenes, and Neptune transforms them into gods. Cadmus and his wife leave Thebes, and are transformed into snakes.

18 Ino and the fall of the house of Cadmus

Reading Visual Art: 211 Narrative modes A

Telling a story, narrative, in a painting is one of its most common purposes, and greatest challenges. A landscape painting shows a view at a moment in time, but doesn’t normally tell a story, as that requires a minimum of two states, with the story linking them. So, although we might speculate what’s going in that countryside, without an indication of what went before, or what happened afterwards, there’s no story there.

Over the centuries, even millennia, since humans have been painting, several techniques have developed for telling a story with more than one timepoint shown in paintings. Although the terms used have varied, in general those fall into the following categories:

  • instantaneous, where the image is intended to show what was happening at a single moment in time, even though it’s likely to contain references to other moments in time;
  • multi-image, where a series of separate images (paintings) is used to tell the story;
  • multiplex, where a single image contains representations of two or more moments in time from a story;
  • multi-frame, where two or more picture frames are used to tell a story, as in comics or manga;
  • polymythic, where a single image contains two or more distinct stories.

In this article and tomorrow’s sequel, I show examples of each of these.

Instantaneous

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Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Rinaldo and Armida (c 1630), oil on canvas, 82.2 x 109.2 cm, Dulwich Picture Gallery. Wikimedia Commons.

Nicolas Poussin’s Rinaldo and Armida from about 1630 draws its narrative from one of his favourite literary works, a then-popular epic poem by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) titled Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), and published in 1581. I have written a series of fourteen articles showing paintings and telling its story, which start here. This particular episode is detailed here.

The sleeping knight is Rinaldo, the greatest of the Christian knights engaged in Tasso’s romanticised and largely fictional account of the First Crusade, who has stopped to rest near the ‘ford of the Orontes’. On hearing a woman singing, he goes to the river, where he catches sight of Armida swimming naked.

Armida, though, had an evil aim, in that she had been secretly following Rinaldo, intending to murder him with her dagger. As the ‘Saracen’ witch who is trying to destroy the crusaders’ campaign, she had singled out its greatest knight for this fate. Having revealed herself to him, she sings and lulls him into an enchanted sleep so that she can thrust her dagger home.

Just as she is about to do this, she falls in love with him instead, and that’s the instant, the twist or peripeteia (to use Aristotle’s term), shown here. A winged amorino, lacking the bow and arrows of a true Cupid, restrains her right arm bearing her weapon. Her facial expression and left hand reveal her new intent to enchant and abduct him in her chariot, so he can become infatuated with her, and forget the Crusade altogether.

This is a single moment in time, in which Poussin has ingeniously incorporated references to the past and future. Provided that you’re familiar with Tasso’s story, it’s a superb example of instantaneous narrative, as practised throughout the history of painting across all continents and cultures.

geromecleopatracaesar
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Cleopatra before Caesar (1866), oil on canvas, 183 x 129.5 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Cleopatra before Caesar (1866) also depicts a single instant, but again has references to prior events, particularly the screwed up carpet, used by Cleopatra to gain entry. Her dreamy look towards Caesar also anticipates her affair with him. It therefore has instantaneous narrative.

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Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), Cinderella (1863), watercolour and gouache on paper, 65.7 x 30.4 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. Wikimedia Commons.

Sometimes paintings with instantaneous narrative can make quite small and subtle references to other events in the story, and confirm their narrative nature. In Edward Burne-Jones’s Cinderella (1863) the only such reference is the missing slipper on Cinderella’s right foot.

detailledream
Édouard Detaille (1848–1912), Le Rêve (The Dream) (1888), oil on canvas, 300 x 400 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. By Enmerkar, via Wikimedia Commons.

Although Édouard Detaille’s Le Rêve (The Dream) (1888) contains two images, these aren’t in fact linked by normal narrative, but the dream image shown in the clouds could be considered as a form of analepsis, or flashback, making it instantaneous narrative.

Multi-image

I’ll be brief with these, as I have covered more examples here and here.

The Eve of St Agnes 1856 by Arthur Hughes 1832-1915
Arthur Hughes (1832–1915), The Eve of St Agnes (1856), oil on canvas, 71 x 124.5 cm, The Tate Gallery, London (Bequeathed by Mrs Emily Toms in memory of her father, Joseph Kershaw 1931). Photographic Rights © Tate 2016, CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hughes-the-eve-of-st-agnes-n04604

In 1856, Arthur Hughes told the story of The Eve of St Agnes in this triptych, read from left to right. At the left Porphyro is approaching the castle. In the centre he has woken Madeline, who hasn’t yet taken him into her bed. At the right the couple make their escape over drunken revellers.

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Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931), Aino Myth, Triptych (1891), oil on canvas, overall 200 x 413 cm, middle panel 154 x 154 cm, outer panels 154 x 77 cm, Ateneum, Helsinki. Wikimedia Commons.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s triptych showing the Aino Myth (1891) contains three separate images telling one of the stories from the Kalevala myths. It is therefore multi-image narrative, within which each image is itself conventional instantaneous narrative.

Multi-frame

Multi-frame paintings are by no means uncommon, but most usually adopt rectangular or square form. Indeed many of the more spectacular frescoes are in effect multi-framed, where there are several images on a single continuous surface. This is similar to the more recent development of comics/BD/graphic novels.

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Gaudenzio Ferrari (1475–1546), Stories of The Life and Passion of Christ (1513), fresco, dimensions not known, Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Varallo Sesia (VC), Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Gaudenzio Ferrari’s Stories of The Life and Passion of Christ (1513) arranges twenty frames covering the life of Christ around a central frame with four times the area of the others, showing the Crucifixion. The frames are naturally (for the European) read from left to right, along the rows from top to bottom, although the Crucifixion is part of the bottom row. This is a layout which is commonly used throughout graphic novels too, of course, and is a superb example of multi-frame narrative more than three centuries before Rodolphe Töpffer started experimenting with comic form.

behamlifedavid
Hans Sebald Beham (1500–1550), Scenes from the Life of David (1534), oil on panel, 128 x 131 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

The four separate episodes forming Hans Sebald Beham’s Scenes from the Life of David (1534) are arranged in a square, so that each occupies a triangular frame, clearly separated from the others, and quite different from a normal linear layout. The snag with this is that the panel is really only suitable for viewing when laid flat on a table, otherwise only one of the frames is correctly orientated. Beham clearly liked the symmetry afforded by this layout, and enhanced it in his composition of the two frames shown here at the top and bottom.

franckencrucifixion
Frans Francken the Younger (1581–1642) attr., The Crucifixion of Christ, with Scenes from the Life of Jesus (1600s), oil on oak panel, 91 x 70 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Frans Francken the Younger’s The Crucifixion of Christ, with Scenes from the Life of Jesus (1600s) puts the Crucifixion scene at the centre of a rectangle, around which are twelve scenes from the life painted in either normal or brown grisaille. Unfortunately those peripheral scenes are difficult to differentiate from one another, thus to identify, but they appear to be read in a clockwise direction from the upper right, rather than linearly.

Polymythic

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John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), Echo and Narcissus (1903), oil on canvas, 109.2 x 189.2 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England. Wikimedia Commons.

Although linked, and often told together, the stories of Echo and of Narcissus can be separated, and it’s therefore feasible to classify John William Waterhouse’s Echo and Narcissus (1903) as being unusual in showing polymythic narrative.

velazquezspinners
Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), The Spinners (Las Hilanderas, The Fable of Arachne) (c 1657), oil on canvas, 220 x 289 cm, Prado Museum, Madrid. Wikimedia Commons.

A few paintings appear even more complex: Velázquez’s Las Hilanderas (The Spinners) may contain one narrative in the foreground, a second in the background, and a third in the painting of The Rape of Europa shown in the far background. This would make it polymythic narrative at the very least.

A Dance to the Music of Time in Intel and Apple silicon logs

Now we’ve got LogUI to give us the times of log entries down to the nearest nanosecond, it’s time to see whether that’s any improvement over other tools. Given that Mach Absolute Time resolves to nanoseconds (10^-9 seconds) in Intel Macs, and just under 42 nanoseconds in Apple silicon Macs, can we now resolve times of events better than when using microseconds (10^-6 seconds)?

Methods

To test this out, I used my command tool blowhole that can run a tight loop writing entries in the log as fast as possible. To do this, it uses the code
for index in 1...number {
os_log("%d", log: Blowhole.gen_log, type: type, index)
}

I then wrote loops of 20 to the log of an iMac Pro (Intel Xeon W CPU), M3 Pro and M4 Pro, and extracted the resulting log entries using LogUI with its new nanosecond times.

Results

Plotting these times against loop number resulted in unexpected patterns.

In this graph, results from the iMac Pro are shown in black, those from the M3 Pro in blue, and the M4 Pro in red. Although less well-ordered in the first to fourth loops, from the fifth loop onwards there were linear relationships between time of log entries and loop number. Linear regression equations are shown in the legend, and demonstrate:

  • on the iMac Pro each loop takes 1.0 x 10^-6 seconds, i.e. 1 μs;
  • on the M3 Pro each loop takes 5.6 x 10^-7 seconds, i.e. 0.6 μs;
  • on the M4 Pro each loop takes 4.6 x 10^-7 seconds, i.e. 0.5 μs.

which perhaps isn’t surprising.

However, the patterns of individual points are quite different. Apart from loops 4 and 5, subsequent loops on the iMac Pro are evenly spaced in time. Those on the Apple silicon chips are grouped in pairs or, for loops 14-16 on the M4 Pro, in a triplet, where two or three loops are assigned the same time in the log.

Looking at time differences, a clear pattern emerges, that log times are incremented in steps of 954 ns. For the iMac Pro, each loop occurs one step later, while for the M3 Pro and M4 Pro steps between pairs and triplets are also 954 ns. In a few cases, the step difference is slightly greater at around 1192 ns instead of 954 ns. Apple silicon chips are faster on average because each step includes two or more loops, while the iMac Pro only manages one loop per step.

Explanation

If log entry times had been given in microseconds rather than nanoseconds, the same patterns would have been seen. But without the additional precision in their times, it wouldn’t have been clear that multiple log entries were being written with identical times, down to the nanosecond.

One likely explanation is that macOS only writes log entries approximately every microsecond, and the entry time recorded for each is that of that writing. Writing log entries must occur asynchronously for the M3 Pro and M4 Pro to be able to send pairs or triplets to be written, rather than having to wait for each writing process to complete.

Thus, the time resolution of log entries is approximately 1 μs, or 954 or 1192 ns to be more precise, and that’s the same regardless of whether macOS is running on a recent Intel Mac or the latest Apple silicon chips. Although a time resolution of 1 μs is sufficient for general purposes, if you want to dig deeper, as I have done here, access to the finer resolution provided in nanosecond times is essential.

Conclusions

  • Times written in log entries are incremented every 954 or 1192 ns on both Intel and Apple silicon.
  • Faster Apple silicon chips can write more than one entry in the same time increment.
  • Although expressing the time of log entries in microseconds is sufficient for general purposes, using nanoseconds can confirm which have occurred simultaneously.

The Music of Time

So what is a Dance to the Music of Time? It’s one of Nicolas Poussin’s most brilliant paintings, that inspired a series of twelve novels written by Anthony Powell. While I wouldn’t attempt to summarise those, here’s the painting to enjoy.

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Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), A Dance to the Music of Time (c 1634-6), oil on canvas, 82.5 × 104 cm, The Wallace Collection, London. Wikimedia Commons.

Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time (c 1634-6) shows four young people dancing, who are currently believed to be Poverty (male at the back, facing away), Labour (closest to Time and looking at him), Wealth (in golden skirt and sandals, also looking at Time), and Pleasure (blue and red clothes) who fixes the viewer with a very knowing smile. Opposite Pleasure is a small herm of Janus, whose two faces look to the past and the future. Father Time at the right is playing his lyre to provide the music, and an infant seated by him holds a sandglass, to measure time periods. Above them in the heavens, Aurora (goddess of the dawn) precedes Apollo’s sun chariot, on which the large ring represents the Zodiac, thus the passage of the months. Behind the chariot are the Horai, the four seasons of the year.

Changing Paintings: 71 Pythagoras and Numa

Ovid’s fifteenth and final book of his Metamorphoses continues his account of the early rulers of Rome, making its way steadily to reach the Emperor Augustus. Following the apotheosis of Romulus, the next to feature is his successor Numa, who becomes the narrator for an overview of the Metamorphoses in terms of Pythagorean philosophy.

Fame nominates Numa as successor to Romulus as the ruler of Rome. Numa had left Cures, the town of his birth, to travel to Crotona (Crotone), in the far south of the Italian peninsula, where he visited Croton, its ruler.

This is the cue for a story about Myscelus, who founded Crotona. Hercules appeared to him in a dream, and told him to travel to the river Aesar, despite his being forbidden from leaving his native land of Argos. Driven by dreams of Hercules, Myscelus tried to leave but was accused of treason, and appealed to Hercules to save him from the mandatory death penalty. At that time, trial juries voted by casting black or white pebbles into an urn; being undoubtedly guilty, all those cast in Myscelus’ case were black when they were placed in the urn. But when the urn was emptied they had all changed to white, and Myscelus was saved, and able to sail to found Crotona on the River Aesar.

After he had fled Samos, Ovid tells us that Pythagoras lived in exile at Crotona, and this leads to a long discourse on his doctrines and philosophy. Having assured us of Pythagoras’ diligent observation of the world around him and careful analysis of what he saw, Ovid starts with an exhortation to vegetarianism.

Within this discourse, Ovid makes reference to preceding sections and themes of Metamorphoses. Pythagoras’ words hark back to the Golden Age covered in the first book. Pythagoras lays claim to reincarnation too, saying that in a previous life he had been Euphorbus, who had been killed by Menelaus in the Trojan War. This leads Pythagoras to discussing change and transformation, the central theme of these fifteen books.

Pythagoras sees change in the waves of the sea, in the sequence of day and night, in the four seasons, in the ageing of humans, and in the transformation of the elements (earth, air, water, and fire).

Pythagoras then illustrates this constant change with a long list of places whose geography had changed in recorded history, and of places that cause change in those who visit them. After those, he returns to the theme of change in animals, telling the legend of the Phoenix reborn from the ashes of its parent. This leads on to consideration of some great cities that have fallen, and the chance to point out that Troy never fell completely, as it reached its destiny of founding the city and empire of Rome. Pythagoras concludes by exhorting vegetarianism by looking for harmless food rather than killing other animals.

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Raphael (1483–1520), The School of Athens (c 1509-11), fresco, dimensions not known, Palazzo Apostolico, Rome, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

In his magnificant fresco in the Palazzo Apostolico, The School of Athens painted in about 1509-11, Raphael includes Pythagoras at the lower left corner.

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Raphael (1483–1520), The School of Athens (detail) (c 1509-11), fresco, dimensions not known, Palazzo Apostolico, Rome, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

This detail shows Pythagoras writing in a large book, with a chalk drawing on a small blackboard in front of his left foot. Others are looking over his shoulder and studying what he is doing.

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Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Frans Snyders (1579–1657), Pythagoras Advocating Vegetarianism (1618-20), oil on canvas, 262 x 378.9 cm, The Royal Collection of the United Kingdom, England. Wikimedia Commons.

Peter Paul Rubens collaborated with Frans Snyders to paint Pythagoras Advocating Vegetarianism in about 1618-20. The mathematician and philosopher sits to the left of centre, with a group of followers further to the left. The painting is dominated by its extensive display of fruit and vegetables, which is being augmented by three nymphs and two satyrs. One of the latter seems less interested in the food than he is in one of the nymphs.

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Fyodor Bronnikov (1827—1902), Pythagoreans Celebrate Sunrise (1869), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Today, Pythagoras is best known for his geometric discoveries, rather than the doctrines detailed by Ovid. Fyodor Bronnikov’s painting of Pythagoreans Celebrate Sunrise from 1869 is perhaps more in keeping with the Classical perception. These followers are decidedly musical, holding between them four lyres, a harp, and a flute, and worshipping the rising sun.

After Numa had learned the doctrines of Pythagoras (an historical impossibility, as Numa lived between about 753-673 BCE, and Pythagoras between about 570-495 BCE and lived in Croton from about 530 BCE), he returned to Rome and established its early laws and institutions.

Numa’s success depended on his wife, the nymph Egeria. Although Ovid isn’t explicit, other sources make the couple’s meeting a key step in the development of Rome, as Egeria was said to have dictated the first set of laws of Rome to Numa.

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Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Numa Pompilius and the Nymph Egeria (1631-33), oil on canvas, 75 × 100 cm, Musée Condé, Chantilly, France. Wikimedia Commons.

Nicolas Poussin’s Numa Pompilius and the Nymph Egeria from 1631-33 is thought to have been painted for his long-term friend and patron Cassiano Dal Pozzo (1588-1657), a scholar and patron of the arts, who was secretary to Cardinal Francesco Barberini.

It shows the meeting of King Numa, at the right, with Egeria, at the left, as she was being entertained by a young man with a lute, who may signify the Muses who apparently inspired Egeria to provide the laws of Rome. However, Numa hasn’t come equipped with any means of recording them, suggesting that this wasn’t the occasion on which Egeria dictated those laws.

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Felice Giani (1758–1823), Numa Pompilius Receiving from the Nymph Egeria the Laws of Rome (1806), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Palazzo dell’Ambasciata di Spagna, Rome, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Felice Giani’s much later painting of Numa Pompilius Receiving from the Nymph Egeria the Laws of Rome (1806) shows that process of dictation in full swing, with Numa working through scrolls, which are then transcribed onto the tablets of stone seen at the left. The nymph is the one sat on a throne, and is clearly in command, wagging her index finger at the King of Rome.

checanymphegeriadictating
Ulpiano Checa (1860–1916), The Nymph Egeria Dictating to Numa Pompilius the Laws of Rome (c 1886), oil on canvas, 300 x 200 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Image by Poniol60, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ulpiano Checa’s The Nymph Egeria Dictating to Numa Pompilius the Laws of Rome (c 1886) offers a similar account, with King Numa sat writing down the laws on scrolls of paper using a reed pen. Egeria is quite different, though, and appears a simple and very naked nymph.

Inevitably, Numa grew old and then died. His wife Egeria was heartbroken: she left the city of Rome, and went deep into the forest, where her moaning disturbed those at the nearby shrine built by Orestes to Diana. Sister nymphs tried to comfort her, but couldn’t help. They told Egeria the tragic tale of Phaedra and Hippolytus, but that didn’t ease her grief either, and she dissolved into tears to be transformed by Diana into a spring.

claudelandscapeegeria
Claude Lorrain (1604/1605–1682), Landscape with the Nymph Egeria Weeping Over Numa (1669), oil on panel, 155 x 199 cm, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy. Image by Mentnafunangann, via Wikimedia Commons.

The only accessible painting showing Egeria’s grief following the death of Numa is Claude Lorrain’s Landscape with the Nymph Egeria Weeping Over Numa from 1669.

Unfortunately, confusion has arisen over the true nature of this painting, as two images of details have been published on the internet purporting to be quite different and complete paintings. Claude’s painting itself is something of a puzzle too, and the result is that many of the images shown online of this work make no sense at all.

The full painting, above, shows a group of people and dogs in the left foreground, set in an idealised classical landscape on the coast.

The detail, shown below, reveals the five women in that group. Second from left is most probably the figure of Egeria, although there is nothing to show her profuse weeping or grief. One of the three women to the right of Egeria is Diana, with her spear, bow, arrows, and hunting dogs. It is unclear whether she is on bended knee, or stood behind holding the leash of one of the dogs.

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Claude Lorrain (1604/1605–1682), Landscape with the Nymph Egeria Weeping Over Numa (detail) (1669), oil on panel, 155 x 199 cm, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

More puzzling is the gesture of the woman (Diana or nymph) who is kneeling on one knee. Her left hand points towards Egeria, and her right is pointing away, towards the buildings down by the water. Her meaning is obscure in the context of the story of Egeria.

Whether this painting by Claude shows the story of Egeria and her grief over the death of Numa must surely be in doubt, and the evidence bears careful re-examination.

A French landscape painter in Rome: Poussin

This weekend I look at two founding fathers of European landscape painting, both of them French expatriates in Italy. Today I trace the story of Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), who took three attempts to get to Rome, where he transferred from painting myths to idealised landscapes. Tomorrow I look at Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682), who developed his distinctive style from imports from Northern Europe, also in Rome.

On Poussin’s first attempt to travel to Rome in 1617 or 1618, he got as far as Florence, where he suffered some sort of accident, and was forced to return home. On his second attempt in 1622, he only got as far as Lyon before turning back. When he finally arrived there in the Spring of 1624, it must have been with a great sense of relief.

The new Pope, Urban VIII, wanted Rome to remain Europe’s artistic capital, and the Academy of Saint Luke was led by another French artist, Simon Vouet, who provided Poussin with accommodation. Although Rome had a thriving art market at the time, Poussin needed patrons, particularly those with good connections, and must have been even more relieved when he was introduced to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who happened to be the Pope’s brother. The next few years were troubled, though: the Cardinal was made papal legate to Spain, so left Rome, and Poussin fell ill with syphilis. It was only through the assistance of a chef that he was able to convalesce, and once he was well again in 1630, he married the chef’s daughter, which demonstrates how little was known about syphilis at the time.

Although it was Cardinal Barberini and his associates who paid Poussin’s bills, by far the most important of his patrons in Rome was the Cardinal’s secretary, Cassiano dal Pozzi (1588-1657), who was of noble birth, had been raised in Florence and educated at the University of Pisa. He was appointed secretary in 1623, and like his master was a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, one of Europe’s earliest scientific societies.

Dal Pozzi was an obsessive collector. He was fascinated by natural history, antiquities, and curiosities of all kinds. He met and corresponded with Galileo, and, as much as his modest means allowed, was a patron of the arts. He bought paintings by Simon Vouet, Artemisia Gentileschi, Pietro da Cortona, even the renegade Caravaggio, but most of all Poussin’s.

Cassiano dal Pozzi lived with his younger brother Carlo and Carlo’s wife Teodora in a palace in the Via Chiavari, which steadily filled with their museum, to which they added other collections of scientific instruments, and a huge library. He employed young draughtsmen to make copies of Rome’s many antiquities, which he bound together in more than 23 volumes, in what was probably the first attempt to document the remains of the classical city.

Following dal Pozzi’s return from Spain in late 1626, he employed Poussin to make some drawings of antiquities, and to paint life-sized pictures of birds such as eagles and ostriches. Sadly, all those ornithological paintings by Poussin have vanished without trace. In return, Poussin was paid, and learned a great deal about Rome, natural history, and other subjects that fascinated his patron. In a fairly short time, the Cardinal’s secretary had assembled a collection of more than fifty of Poussin’s paintings, and it was he who encouraged Poussin to paint scenes from the the artist’s most enduring literary source, Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered.

With the support of dal Pozzi, Poussin became well-read and erudite, and composed each of his paintings with exceptional care and thought. One of his central concepts drew from modes in music, in which adoption of a tonal mode set the mood of the work.

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Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Abduction of the Sabine Women (c 1634-35), oil on canvas, 154.6 x 209.9 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

In his early career, Poussin was an outstanding figurative painter who specialised in classical narrative, such as his famous Abduction of the Sabine Women (c 1634-35). It’s set against the historical background of the Capitoline Hill and the Tarpeian Rock, because of their importance in the narrative. As the bearded figure of Romulus stands overseeing the abduction, the hill and its precipitous cliffs dominate the distance.

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Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Landscape with a Man Drinking, or Landscape with a Man Scooping Water from a Stream (c 1637), oil on canvas, 63 x 77.7 cm, The National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

In Landscape with a Man Scooping Water from a Stream (c 1637) Poussin has painted a landscape dominated by trees, most probably his lifelong favourite, oaks, in this case the Holm Oak, Quercus ilex. Each is carefully constructed from the trunk and branch anatomy, and their canopies, although dense, are clearly formed from leaves rather than solid masses. The distant view is that of an idealised Roman campagna, which was to reappear in his later works.

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Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Landscape with Saint John on Patmos (1640), oil on canvas, 100.3 x 136.4 cm, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Wikimedia Commons.

Landscape with Saint John on Patmos (1640) shows another idealised landscape, probably based on the western Italian coast rather than Patmos in the Dodecanese, in the eastern Aegean. Instead of placing trees at the edges, Poussin sets them further back; again these have the look of oaks. There is a richer variety in the middle distance, breaking the more regular lines of ancient ruins.

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Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Landscape with the Funeral of Phocion (1648), oil on canvas, 114 x 175 cm, National Museum of Wales / Amgueddfa Cymru, Cardiff, Wales. Wikimedia Commons.

In Landscape with the Funeral of Phocion from 1648, the narrative figures in the foreground are small, and mixed with others who are part of its non-narrative background. Among that staffage are some who recur in his later landscapes: the shepherd with his flock, and the horseman. Deciding which are intended to be part of the narrative isn’t always obvious, and part of the fascination of Poussin’s paintings.

Nicolas Poussin, Stormy Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe (1651), oil on canvas, 191 x 274 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main, German. Wikimedia Commons.
Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Stormy Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe (1651), oil on canvas, 191 x 274 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main, German. Wikimedia Commons.

It was dal Pozzi who commissioned Poussin’s magnificent Stormy Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe (1651). Here the classical tragedy of the deaths of the lovers is being played out against one of Poussin’s most exciting landscapes. The lioness from that story has escaped into the middle ground and is attacking a horse, as everyone else is fleeing from the imminent thunderstorm. The mode is impending catastrophe.

Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with a Calm (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.
Nicolas Poussin (1694-1665), Landscape with a Calm (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Landscape with a Calm from about 1651 is one of his late pure landscape paintings, of a view that never existed except in the artist’s imagination, although there’s something familiar about each of the elements within it. Like an Advent calendar, it contains scattered scenes which the viewer is tempted to try to construct into a coherent narrative, but are probably just part of the painting’s mode.

Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with a Calm (detail) (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.
Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Landscape with a Calm (detail) (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

In the foreground is a herdsman with his dog, tending to a small flock of goats grazing erratically at the borders of a track that meanders down to the lake. The only distinctive feature of the man, and indeed of this whole passage, is how non-descript he is. He has nothing that could be interpreted as an attribute, and gives no clue as to his identity. Just above his head is the distinctive arrowhead of broken water in the otherwise mirror-like surface of the lake, but there is nothing else of remark.

Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with a Calm (detail) (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.
Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Landscape with a Calm (detail) (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

The most prominent feature of the painting is its large Italianate villa. In front of its outermost earthworks, two herdsmen tend a flock of sheep and cattle. The man on the left is playing bagpipes. There are figures scattered just outside and within the grounds of the villa, and two visible at its ground floor windows. There’s nothing that appears to be out of the ordinary here either.

Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with a Calm (detail) (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.
Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Landscape with a Calm (detail) (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

The greatest human activity in the painting is at the left, where there are two horses with riders, and another horse visible within the outbuilding. One horse and its rider are just galloping off to the left; the other horse, its rider still mounted, is drinking from a trough under a portico at the end of the building. Above that horse’s hindquarters is an inscription that is illegible.

Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with a Calm (detail) (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.
Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Landscape with a Calm (detail) (c 1651), oil on canvas, 97 x 131 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Among the background details there are bonfires. One burns vigorously with bright orange flames, and their smoke wafts erratically into the air, indicating the calm.

All the clues which the artist gives us point towards the mode of calm and peace in this landscape. Its one small burst of activity is a galloping horse. The air is so calm that the lake reflects like a mirror, and one tiny patch of broken water stands out.

It was Poussin who made the transition from painting mythological stories set in the countryside, to pure landscapes, albeit idealised composites assembled from quotations of reality.

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