This is the last of four articles providing brief summaries and contents for this series of paintings telling myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and covers parts 55-74, from the foundation of Troy to the age of Augustus.
Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), The Golden Apple of Discord (1633), oil on canvas, 181 × 288 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.
The foundation of Troy by Laomedon who failed to repay Apollo and Neptune for their help, so Neptune floods the city. Peleus marries the Nereid Thetis, with their wedding banquet on Mount Pelion, attended by the gods. Eris, goddess of discord, throws a golden apple into the group as a reward for the fairest, setting up the Judgement of Paris and leading to the war against Troy. Thetis gives birth to Achilles.
Chione boasts she is fairer than Diana, so the goddess shoots an arrow through her tongue, and she bleeds to death. Her father is turned into a hawk. Ceyx and Halcyone are turned into kingfishers. Aesacus is turned into a seabird after the death of Hesperia from a snake bite.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (1770), oil on canvas, 65 × 112 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.
After his judgement, Paris abducts Helen and triggers the war against Troy. The thousand ships of the Greeks gather at Aulis, where they’re delayed by storms. Their leader Agamemnon had offended Diana, so has to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to propitiate the goddess. At the last moment, Diana may have substituted a deer.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), The Rape of Hippodame (Lapiths and Centaurs) (1636-38), oil on canvas, 182 × 290 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.
The Greek fleet sets sail against Troy, and when it arrives Protesilaus, the first to land, is killed by Hector. Achilles kills Cycnus, who is transformed into a swan. Caeneus was born a woman and raped by Neptune, for which she was turned into a male warrior. Nestor tells of the battle between Lapiths and Centaurs at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodame.
Alexander Rothaug (1870-1946), The Death of Achilles (date not known), brown ink and oil en grisaille over traces of black chalk on canvas, dimensions and location not known. Wikimedia Commons.
Neptune’s hatred for Achilles leads to the warrior’s death from an arrow shot by Paris.
Gillis van Valckenborch (attr) (1570-1622), The Sack of Troy, oil on canvas, 141 x 220 cm, Private Collection. Wikimedia Commons.
Ajax and Ulysses contest for the armour of Achilles, but Ajax loses and falls on his sword. His blood is turned into the purple hyacinth flower. Troy falls, Priam is killed, Hector’s son Astyanax is thrown from a tower, and Troy is sacked by the Greeks.
Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), The Sacrifice of Polyxena (1647), oil on canvas, 177.8 x 131.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.
Queen Hecuba’s youngest son is murdered, and her daughter Polyxena is sacrificed to gain fair winds for the departing Greek fleet. Hecuba blinds Polymestor and is transformed into a dog. Aurora laments the death of her son Memnon.
Pompeo Batoni (1708–1787), Aeneas Fleeing from Troy (1753), oil on canvas, 76.7 × 97 cm, Galleria Sabauda, Turin, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.
Aeneas flees Troy with his father Anchises and son Ascanius, but his wife Creusa dies before she can escape. They sail with a fleet of Trojan survivors to Delos, then on to Crete.
Odilon Redon (1840–1916), The Cyclops (c 1914), oil on cardboard mounted on panel, 65.8 × 52.7 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.
Aeneas sails on to land on Sicily. Galatea tells the story of her love for Acis, and the jealousy of Polyphemus the Cyclops, who killed Acis, whose blood was turned into a stream.
Glaucus pursues Scylla, and is refused, so he visits Circe, who turns the lower part of Scylla’s body into a pack of dogs, then finally into a rock in the Straits of Messina. Together with Charybdis the whirlpool, they pose a threat to Odysseus’ ship.
Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), Dido (1781), oil on canvas, 244.3 x 183.4 cm, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. Wikimedia Commons.
Aeneas is rowed through the straits only to be blown south to Carthage, where he has an affair with Queen Dido. When he departs she falls on a sword he gave her and dies on her funeral pyre. Aeneas returns north to land at Cumae to visit its Sibyl. The pair visit the underworld, where they meet the ghost of Anchises.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (1829), oil on canvas, 132.7 × 203 cm, The National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.
A survivor left from Ulysses’ crew tells of their encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus, who had held them captive. Ulysses got him drunk and blinded his single eye. The crew escaped tied under a flock of sheep. As they fled in their ship, the Cyclops threw a huge rock at them.
John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus (1891), oil on canvas, 149 x 92 cm, Gallery Oldham, Manchester, England. Wikimedia Commons.
A second of Ulysses’ crew tells of their time on Circe’s island. She turned them into pigs, but they were transformed back after Ulysses and Circe married.
Circe transforms Picus, King of Latium, into a woodpecker. Aeneas arrives at Latium, where he has to fight Turnus for the throne. Aeneas’ ships are burned and transformed into sea nymphs. As the end of Aeneas’ life draws near, he undergoes apotheosis to become Indiges.
Pomona, a dedicated gardener who shuns men, is courted unsuccessfully by Vertumnus, god of the seasons. He assumes the guise of an old woman to try to persuade her, and tells her the tragic story of Iphis and Anaxarete, who was transformed into a statue. Vertumnus finally succeeds.
Rome is founded by Romulus. Its war with the Sabines, the death of the Sabine King Tatius, and Romulus becomes ruler of both peoples. Romulus is transformed into the god Quirinus, with his wife Hersilia as the goddess Hora.
Myscelus is saved from death and goes on to found Crotona, where Pythagoras lived in exile. Pythagoras expounds change and transformation underlying everything in nature, and the central theme of Metamorphoses. The virtues of vegetarianism. King Numa returns to Rome and establishes its laws.
Plague strikes Rome. The oracle at Delphi tells the Romans to bring the god Aesculapius to the city. He is taken as a snake from Epidaurus to his temple on Tiber Island, and the Romans are saved from plague.
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), The Death of Caesar (1859-67), oil on canvas, 85.5 x 145.5 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD. By courtesy of Walters Art Museum, via Wikimedia Commons.
The assassination of Julius Caesar, who then undergoes apotheosis.
Jupiter foretells the accomplishments of Augustus, including success in battle, the fall of Cleopatra, and growth of the empire. The fate of Ovid in banishment to Tomis on the Black Sea.
This is the third of four articles providing brief summaries and contents for this series of paintings telling myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and covers parts 37-54, from the fall of Icarus to King Midas.
Jacob Peter Gowy (c 1615-1661), The Fall of Icarus (1635-7), oil on canvas, 195 x 180 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Wikimedia Commons.
Daedalus and his son Icarus try to escape Crete using wings of feathers and wax. Icarus flies too near the sun, his wings melt and he falls to his death. Daedalus’ nephew is transformed into a partridge.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), The Hunt of Meleager and Atalanta (c 1616-20), oil on canvas, 257 × 416 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Wikimedia Commons.
Calydon troubled by a wild boar. Many heroes hunt the animal, and Meleager is successful. He shares the glory of his prize with Atalanta, but his uncles take the prize, so Meleager kills them both.
Meleager’s mother Althaea avenges the deaths of her brothers by throwing a log on the fire, causing her son’s death. His sisters are turned into birds. Theseus travels home from the boar hunt and is entertained by Achelous, who explains how nymphs were transformed into the islands of the Echinades.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669), Baucis and Philemon (1658), oil on panel mounted on panel, 54.5 × 68.5 cm, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art, via Wikimedia Commons.
Lelex tells of Jupiter and Mercury seeking hospitality when visiting Phrygia. Only the humble and poor couple Philemon and Baucis entertain them. The gods save them from a flood that drowns everyone else. They’re later transformed into intertwining oak and lime trees.
Achelous tells those at his banquet of three shape-shifters: Proteus the old man of the sea, Erysichthon who sold his daughter to assuage his hunger until he consumed his own body, and Achelous himself.
Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), Achelous and Hercules (1947), tempera and oil on canvas mounted on plywood, 159.7 × 671 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.
Achelous and Hercules wrestle for the hand of Deianira. Achelous turns himself into a bull, and Hercules wrenches off one of his horns, which becomes cornucopia, the Horn of Plenty.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) (workshop of), The Abduction of Deianeira by the Centaur Nessus (c 1640), oil on panel, 70.5 x 110 cm, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover, Hanover, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.
Hercules marries Deianira, but the centaur Nessus tries to abduct her, so Hercules kills him. Nessus gives Deianira some of his blood, and tricks her later into impregnating one of Hercules’ shirts with it, causing him to incinerate himself on a pyre. He is then turned into a god.
Dryope picks lotus flowers, and is punished by transformation into a Lotus Tree. Byblis dissolves into a spring after falling in love with her twin brother. A daughter raised as Iphis, a boy, who was transformed into a man immediately before marrying the woman Ianthe.
Ary Scheffer (1795–1858), Orpheus Mourning the Death of Eurydice (c 1814), oil on canvas, dimensions and location not known. Wikimedia Commons.
Orpheus marries Eurydice, who is bitten by a snake and dies. He travels to the underworld and pleads for her to be allowed to return with him. That’s approved, provided he doesn’t look back. Near the end of their return journey, he does look back, and she fades away back into the underworld. He then shuns women for three years in his grief.
Cyparissus befriends a stag, then accidentally kills it, and in his grief is transformed into a cypress tree, now grown near cemeteries. Orpheus tells of the young Ganymede, who was abducted by Jupiter and taken to Mount Olympus to be cupbearer to the gods.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), The Death of Hyacinthus (c 1752-53), oil on canvas, 287 × 232 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.
Hyacinthus, lover of Apollo, is killed by the god’s discus, and transformed into the purple hyacinth flower.
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Pygmalion and Galatea (c 1890), oil on canvas, 88.9 x 68.6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.
Pygmalion rejects libidinous behaviour in women, and remains celibate. He carves a statue of a woman in ivory, and asks Venus for a bride like her. His statue is transformed into a woman, they marry, and have a daughter Paphos.
Myrrha is made pregnant by her father following a deception. He tries to kill her, but she flees and calls on the gods, who transform her into a myrrh tree. Nevertheless, her baby is born, and becomes Adonis.
Guido Reni (1575–1642), Hippomenes and Atalanta (1618—19), oil on canvas, 206 x 297 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.
Venus tells Adonis of the story of Atalanta, who had been told not to marry, and became a fast runner. Hippomenes challenges her to a race for her hand in marriage. He tricks her during that by dropping three golden apples provided by Venus, and beats her to the finish as a result. He didn’t thank Venus for her help, so the couple make love in a shrine to Cybele. As punishment they are transformed into lions to draw Cybele’s chariot.
Hendrik Goltzius (1558–1617), Dying Adonis (1609), oil on canvas, 76.5 × 76.5 cm, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.
Despite the warnings of his lover Venus, Adonis goes hunting, is gored in the groin by a wild boar, and dies. His blood is turned into the red anemone.
Émile Lévy (1826–1890), Death of Orpheus (1866), oil on canvas, 189 x 118 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.
Orpheus is attacked by a mob of Bacchantes, torn limb from limb, and dies. His remains are dispersed into rivers, and his soul reunited with Eurydice. The Bacchantes are transformed into an oak wood.
Bacchus grants the wish of King Midas, and everything he touches is transformed into gold. This proves a disaster, so Bacchus removes that gift. Midas loses a music contest with Apollo, for which he is given ass’s ears.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
With Julius Caesar transformed into a star following his assassination, Ovid ends the last book of his Metamorphoses with praise of the contemporary Emperor Augustus, and expresses his own aspirations to immortality.
Jupiter foretells some of the accomplishments of Caesar’s adopted heir, Augustus, who was then still known as Octavius or Octavian. These include successes in battle, the fall of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and the growth of the Roman Empire. Ovid then looks ahead to Augustus’ own future apotheosis, when he will become a god. Finally, the author wishes for his words to be read throughout the empire, and to live on in fame.
Louis Gauffier (1762–1801), Cleopatra and Octavian (1787), oil on canvas, 83.8 x 112.5 cm, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland. Wikimedia Commons.
Cleopatra’s legendary beauty has been expressed in paint by several artists, among them Louis Gauffier, whose Cleopatra and Octavian of 1787 shows the young Augustus and Queen Cleopatra conversing under the watchful eye of Julius Caesar’s bust. Cleopatra allied herself with Antony, and was eventually defeated at the Battle of Actium, ending years of civil war in Rome. Antony fell on his sword, and Cleopatra is reputed to have killed herself with the bite of an asp.
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ (c 1852-54), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, location not known. Image by Wmpearl, via Wikimedia Commons.
It’s Jean-Léon Gérôme who reminds us of the great events that were taking place at the eastern end of the Mediterranean during the reign of Augustus, in The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ (c 1852-54). The emperor sits on his throne, overseeing a huge gathering of people from all over the Roman Empire. Grouped in the foreground in a quotation from a traditional nativity is the Holy Family, whose infant son was to transform the empire in the centuries to come. Sadly for Ovid, and even Virgil, Gérôme’s throng doesn’t appear to include distinguished poets from the Augustan age.
Several painters have, though, shown Augustus’ favourite Virgil at the emperor’s court. Jean-Joseph Taillasson’s Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia from 1787 shows the poet at the left, holding a copy of his Aeneid, reading a passage to the emperor Augustus and his sister Octavia. Augustus has been moved to tears by the passage praising Octavia’s dead son Marcellus, and his sister has swooned in her emotional response.
Artist not known, The Great Cameo of France (c 50 CE), five-layered sardonyx cameo, 31 x 26.5 cm, Cabinet des médailles, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Image by Jastrow and Janmad, via Wikimedia Commons.
Ovid was in no position to commit Augustus’ eventual death and apotheosis to verse, but this is shown in an exquisite sardonyx cameo known as The Great Cameo of France from the first century CE. Augustus is here being brought up to the gods at the top of the scene.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), Maecenas Presenting the Liberal Arts to Emperor Augustus (1743), oil on panel, 70 x 89 cm, Hermitage Museum Государственный Эрмитаж, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Wikimedia Commons.
Although a fan of Virgil and a minor author in his own right, Augustus wasn’t a strong patron of the arts. Until 8 BCE, his friend Gaius Maecenas acted as cultural advisor to Augustus, and was a major patron of Virgil. Tiepolo’s Maecenas Presenting the Liberal Arts to Emperor Augustus from 1743 shows Maecenas at the left introducing an anachronistic woman painter and other artists to the emperor.
Ovid’s major patron was Marcus Valerius Messalia Corvinus, and is thought to have been friends with poets in the circle of Maecenas. But all this became irrelevant when Ovid offended Augustus, and in 8 CE was banished to Tomis, on the western coast of the Black Sea, at the north-eastern edge of the Roman Empire.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), Ancient Italy – Ovid Banished from Rome (1838), oil on canvas, 94.6 x 125 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.
It is perhaps JMW Turner who has best captured this in his Ancient Italy – Ovid Banished from Rome, exhibited in 1838. In a dusk scene more characteristic of Claude Lorrain’s contre-jour riverscapes, Turner gives a thoroughly romantic view of Ovid’s departure by boat from the bank of the Tiber.
Ovid died in Tomis in 17 or 18 CE, and by a quirk of fate his banishment from the city of Rome wasn’t formally revoked until 2017, two millennia later.
But Ovid saw his road to immortality not by apotheosis, rather through his work being read, and living on in the minds of those countless readers. In that, he undoubtedly succeeded: his Metamorphoses and other poems continue to be read, both in their original Latin and in translation into many languages, and depicted in many great paintings.
Login
