What’s Love Got to Do with It? Ovid, the “Love of the Gods,” and Cinquecento Carved Cassoni
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- Figure 1 Unknown, Left: Sea-God and Nereid; Right Europa and the Bull, second half of the 16th century, wood (walnut) carved and gilded, 57 x 88 x 67.5 cm, St. Petersburg: Hermitage Museum, Inventory number Эпр-6791
- Figure 2 Titian, The Rape of Europa, 1560-62, oil on canvas, 178 x 205 cm, Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
- Figure 3 Liberale da Verona, The Rape of Europa, 1475-1500, oil on wood, Paris: Musée du Louvre.
- Figure 4 Unknown, Nessus and Deianira, late sixteenth century, Venice: Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro.
- Figure 5 Unknown, Left: Leda and the Swan; Right: Apollo with an orb, 1580-89, walnut, 65 x 171.5 x 61 cm, Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Accession number F15s7
- Figure 6 Unknown, Left: Ganymede and the Eagle; Right: Woman with an Orb, 1580, 62 x 178 x 58 cm, private collection. Reference number LVS509
- Figure 7 Attributed to Franceso Melzi, Leda, oil on panel, 1508-15, 130 x 77.5 cm, Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi.
- Figure 8 Cornelis Bos, Leda and the swan, 1544-66, engraving, 30.2 x 41.3 cm, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accession number 57.658.153
- Figure 9 Peter Paul Rubens, The Abduction of Ganymede, oil on canvas, 1611-12, 203 x 203 cm, Vienna: Schwarzenberg Palace.
- Figure 10 Workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni di Tomaso and Marco del Buono di Marco, Rape of Ganymede, tempera on panel, after 1465, 38 x 40 cm, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. Accession number 06.2441
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13138/2039-2362/3278Abstract
In his account of the contest between Pallas and Arachne, Ovid described the latter’s woven work as an elaborate representation of the destructive and uninhibited nature of the Olympian gods when their lust overwhelmed their common sense – a record of their seductions, rapes, and abductions of mortals (Ovid, Met. 6. 103–128). That passage, together with a longer retelling of each individual myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, created a fertile ground for early modern artists to portray erotic and/or violent scenes between men and women or, in some cases, between men and other, often younger, men. Most notable are the visual representations of myths about the “love of the gods,” for example, the rape of Europa and the seduction of Leda on Cinquecento carved cassoni, which place the myths and their import in the context of sixteenth-century domesticity. In this study, I explore these images with a view toward the didactic messages that they might have conveyed and suggest that through such myths, the bride was exhorted to act in a chaste manner and the groom was warned against succumbing to lust.
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