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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 6 – Jupiter and Callisto
After the Chariot of the Sun had almost destroyed the earth by fire, Ovid tells us that Jupiter checked the walls of heaven, then surveyed the land to assure himself that it was recovering properly....
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 7 – The Raven and Crow, and...
After the dreadful story of Callisto’s abuse, Ovid returns to the image of Juno riding high in her chariot with peacocks adorned with the eyes of dead Argus. This leads on to one of the more intricate...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 8 – Turned into stone,...
Having considered the consquences of gossip and telling tales about others, Ovid turns in the later sections of Book 2 of his Metamorphoses to consider related sins. He leads into this with a short...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 9 – The abduction of Europa
The final myth in Book 2 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses is told very briefly – in less than thirty lines of Latin – and ends part way through the story. This is the famous rape of Europa, although here Ovid...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 10 – Cadmus and the...
Ovid concluded Book 2 of his Metamorphoses with the story of the abduction of Europa, up to the point where Jupiter, then a white bull, shot off over the sea with Europa on his back. Book 3 opens where...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 11 – Actaeon’s fatal mistake
Cadmus founded the city of Thebes, and in his series of stories about that city, Ovid moves on to consider the fate of its founder’s grandson, Actaeon. Unusually, Ovid prefaces this story with a short...
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Franz von Stuck’s Thoroughly Modern Histories: 1 1887-1891
Along with Lovis Corinth and others, Franz von Stuck (1863–1928) was one of the co-founders of the Munich Secession, and a career-long painter of myth and narrative. If Corinth is little-known outside...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 12 – Semele and Jupiter’s...
After telling the tragic fate of Actaeon, the grandson of Cadmus, founder of Thebes, Ovid describes the next disaster to strike the house of Thebes, in the bizarre myth of Semele, Cadmus’ daughter. The...
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Franz von Stuck’s Thoroughly Modern Histories: 2 1892-1900
The Munich Secession, in 1892, was a watershed in von Stuck’s life and his art. Together with Lovis Corinth and almost a hundred other artists, von Stuck resigned from the official Artists’...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 13 – Tiresias, Echo and...
After the remarkable birth of Bacchus, Ovid breaks from his Theban cycle to introduce Tiresias, who at first seems an irrelevant distraction, but leads us into one of the best stories in the whole of...
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Franz von Stuck’s Thoroughly Modern Histories: 3 1901-1909
By 1900, Franz von Stuck had built upon his already substantial reputation, and remained active in the Munich Secession. Franz von Stuck (1863–1928), Spring (1902), oil, dimensions not known,...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 14 – Pentheus and Bacchus
Having introduced Tiresias to us as a seer, and after taking a short break from the Theban cycle, Ovid’s last story in Book 3 of his Metamorphoses involves a prophecy from Tiresias about Theban events,...
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Franz von Stuck’s Thoroughly Modern Histories: 4 1910-1913
The first decade of the twentieth century had been highly successful for Franz von Stuck, with paintings such as Salome (1906), and his ennoblement in the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown. Over the...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 15 – Pyramus and Thisbe
The fourth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses starts with the introduction of a team of narrators, the daughters of Minyas, who take it in turns to tell us stories within their story. These women provide a...
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Franz von Stuck’s Thoroughly Modern Histories: 5 1914-1928
By the start of the First World War, Franz von Stuck was successful, ennobled, and had just had a new studio built at his Villa Stuck in Munich. One of its features, a dedicated floor for sculture, was...
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Pride and Petulance: How one woman almost spared Troy
Homer’s Iliad centres on events during the war against Troy, but is far from being a comprehensive account of the decade during which combined ancient Greek forces tried to crush the mighty fortress...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 16 – Venus and Mars,...
After the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe has been told by the first of the daughters of Minyas, the second daughter starts telling her story. As is so often the case in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we get more...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 17 – Salmacis and...
Once the second daughter of Minyas has completed her story of Leucothoe and Clytie’s love for the Sun, the third daughter starts her speech. As with the first daughter, she tantalises us by mentioning...
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Fifty Brides for Fifty Brothers, and their Unexpected Wedding Night
Stories of the abduction of women and their enforced marriage have persisted for an extraordinary length of time. One of the most popular, and still much-loved, musicals is Seven Brides for Seven...
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Love, myth, and exile: the life of Ovid in paintings
I have written a lot here about the writings of the Augustan Roman poet Ovid – his Metamorphoses and latterly his Heroides – and how they have inspired so many major and less well-known paintings. But...
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