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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 41 Meleager, Atalanta, and...
As Ovid approaches the midpoint of Book 8 of his Metamorphoses, hence the middle of its fifteen books, he has just left Daedalus burying his son Icarus after their fantastic flight went wrong. Ovid...
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Edgar Degas: Narrative paintings to 1865
It is easy to forget that Edgar Degas was primarily a history and portrait painter for the first decade of his career. This article and the next look at his two phases of narrative work, and the...
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Edgar Degas: Narrative paintings from 1866
Edgar Degas started his career as a history painter, and by 1865 had completed a series of five works intended to launch that career. In the latter 1860s, Degas painted more portraits, and started to...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 42 The Death of Meleager,...
At the end of the Calydonian boar hunt, what should have been an occasion for rejoicing was marred when the two sons of Thestius objected to Meleager giving Atalanta the prize, and the enraged Meleager...
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Edgar Degas: Dancers 2, Lessons and rehearsal
Soon after 1870, when Edgar Degas started to paint individual dancers in the ballet of the Paris Opera, he made more complex compositions involving multiple dancers performing different activities....
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Turner, painted propaganda, and the birth of Modern Europe
Sometimes you have to dig around a bit to understand what is going on in a painting, particularly some of JMW Turner’s. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), The Opening of the Wallhalla, 1842...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 43 Philemon and Baucis,...
The river god Achelous is hosting a banquet, his guests being Theseus, Ixion’s son, Lelex, and others. Once Achelous has told the story of the nymphs who were turned into the Echinades, Lelex starts...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 44 Shape-shifters and death...
As Ovid draws Book 8 of his Metamorphoses to a close, Lelex has just told the touching story of Philemon and Baucis, who were transformed into an intertwining pair of trees, one an oak, the other a...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 45 – How came the Horn of...
Ovid closed Book 8 of his Metamorphoses with a teaser: he told us how Achelous, the river god, was able to transform himself into a snake or bull, and that he has recently lost one of the bull’s two...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 46 – Nessus, Deianira, and...
Achelous has just told the story of his wrestling match with Hercules, and how his lost horn was transformed into the Horn of Plenty, cornucopia. By this time, the floods have abated, a new day is...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 47 – the birth of Hercules
Having just told us of the series of events leading to the death and apotheosis of Hercules, Ovid continues book 9 of his Metamorphoses by telling the story of the hero’s birth. The Story Ovid leads...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 48 – Dryope, and an...
After he has told us the story of the birth of Hercules, Ovid uses Alcmena’s link with Hercules’ former lover Iole to introduce a relatively obscure story of transformation, that of Dryope. The Story...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 0 – index and bibliography
There are two major literary sources which have inspired more European and North American paintings than any others: the Bible, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Although most of us are at least fairly...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 49 – Transgender marriage
As Ovid reaches the end of Book 9 of his Metamorphoses, and has just told us of the tragic transformation of Byblis into a spring of her own tears, he tackles one of his most remarkably insightful...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 50 – Orpheus and Eurydice
Ovid ended Book 9 of his Metamorphoses with some myths which posed painters problems, but opens Book 10 with one of the greatest and most enduring stories of the European canon: that of Orpheus and...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 51 – How the cypress tree...
Book 10 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses follows the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice with two brief stories of people transformed into trees. The first is only mentioned in passing, as a link to the main story...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 52 – Hyacinthus killed by a...
In Ovid’s previous story in Book 10 of his Metamorphoses, Cyparissus was transformed into a cypress tree in recognition of his grief when he accidentally killed his ‘pet’ stag. The next story concerns...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 53 – Pygmalion and his statue
Ovid moves his Metamorphoses on from the commemoration of the dead Hyacinthus in the purple hyacinth flower, to one of his most unusual myths. The vast majority of the myths of transformation which he...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 70 – Galatea’s lover...
As Ovid nears the end of Book 13 of his Metamorphoses, Aeneas and his companions are in transit across the Mediterranean towards Italy and destiny. The poet rushes them through a rapid succession of...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 71 – Glaucus and Scylla
As Ovid brings Book 13 of his Metamorphoses to a close, we are with Aeneas on Sicily. Scylla has been combing the hair of Galatea, who told the tragic story of the death of her lover, Acis. Ovid then...
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