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

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

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

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

3 Daphne becomes the laurel

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

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

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

9 The abduction of Europa

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long before its commercialisation as entertainment, wrestling was an important form of hand-to-hand combat, developed into a sport by the ancient Greeks, and a feature of Spartan military training and classical games, the origin of the Olympics. Although never a popular theme for paintings, wrestling has narrative significance, as shown in this small selection of examples.

In ancient myth, Achelous and the hero Hercules (Heracles) engaged in a wrestling match, during which Achelous transformed himself into a bull, Hercules wrenched one of his horns off, and that became the cornucopia, horn of plenty.

Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem’s painting of Hercules and Achelous, probably from around 1590, shows a late stage in their wrestling, with Achelous the bull brought to the ground by Hercules, who is here trying to twist his horns off.

Guido Reni’s Hercules and Achelous (1617-21) opts for a more conventional wrestling match, with Achelous still in human form.

Noël Coypel, father of the better-known history painter Antoine Coypel, painted Hercules Fighting Achelous in about 1667-69. This too opts to show the pair during the first phase of their fight. In addition to wearing his lionskin, Hercules wields his fearsome club, although Ovid doesn’t refer to its use on this occasion.

Another ancient narrative involving wrestling is told in the Old Testament book of Genesis, chapter 32 verses 22-31, when Jacob is on his journey to Canaan:

And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had.

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, “Let me go, for the day breaketh.” And he said, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” And he said unto him, “What is thy name?” And he said, “Jacob.”

And he said, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” And Jacob asked him, and said, “Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.” And he said, “Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?” And he blessed him there.

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Peniel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh.

Eugène Delacroix’s large and magnificent painting of Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1854-61) shows the moment the stranger touches Jacob on the tendon of his thigh and renders him helpless (detail below). To the right are flocks of sheep with Jacob’s shepherds driving them on horses and camels.

Jacob and the Angel (1874-78) is Gustave Moreau’s finished oil painting showing the young Jacob wrestling heroically with the invisible power that is God, the angel standing nonchalantly by.

The other well-known story of wrestling in ancient times is that of Samson and the lion. When he was young, Samson fell in love with a Philistine woman. Despite the objections of his parents, he decided to marry her, and travelled to make his proposal. On that journey, he was attacked by a lion, which he wrestled with, and tore apart, thanks to the strength given him by God. He told no one about that episode, and when he was on his way to his wedding, he came across the carcass of that lion. In its body was a bees’ nest containing honey. This inspired the line ‘out of strength came forth sweetness’, long used as a motto on tins of golden syrup.

During Samson’s wedding feast, he posed his thirty Philistine groomsmen a riddle based on his encounters with that lion: Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet. They failed to guess the answer, which Samson only revealed after they had threatened him, and his bride had begged him to do so.

In 1891 Léon Bonnat reaffirmed his brilliance at painting figures in Samson’s Youth.

Franz von Stuck’s Samson (1891) is meticulously labelled, and shows the immensely strong Israelite warrior fighting with the huge lion.

During the nineteenth century, folk and Greco-Roman wrestling developed into a sport popular enough by the time of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 to qualify for inclusion there.

Gustave Courbet’s Wrestlers from 1853 shows two well-muscled men grappling with one another to the entertainment of distant crowds. Unusually for his figurative paintings of the time, Courbet makes it clear that the wrestlers were painted in the studio and appear almost pasted into the setting, without integration of their shadows, for example, and his perspective looks slightly askew.

Frédéric Bazille started painting Summer Scene, also known as Bathers, during the summer of 1869 when he was on holiday in Montpellier. He had already made a series of compositional studies, from as early as February that year, but when he was working on the canvas, he didn’t find it easy going, and complained of headaches and other pains.

He eventually opted for a composition based on strong diagonals, with the bathers in the foreground in shade, while the two wrestlers in the distance are lit by sunshine. The landscape background was painted from the hot green mixture of grass with birch and pine trees, typical of the banks of the River Lez, near Montpellier. He completed this painting in early 1870, and it was accepted for the Salon of that year, where it was well-received by the critics.

Twenty years later, the Naturalist Émile Friant painted The Fight, or Wrestling, (1889), in a rural scene from near Nancy, France. A group of boys have gathered by a small river, and look ready to enter the water. Two are in the foreground, on the opposite bank, engaged in a fight. They are strained over, as one holds the other in a wrestling lock, with their legs spread wide apart and tensed.