Clik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 72 – Scylla transformed
As he ended Book 13 of his Metamorphoses with Scylla running off from the advances of Glaucus, Ovid starts Book 14 with Glaucus trying to use sorcery to make Scylla love him. For this, he turns to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 73 – Dido and Aeneas, and...
Following the transformation of Scylla into a rock, Aeneas is rowed through the Straits of Messina, forward in his epic voyage. Unlike his earlier rival Virgil, Ovid again skips through those...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 74 – The Shrinking Sibyl
In Book 14 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Aeneas is at last making his way up the coast of Italy towards his destiny, leading to the foundation of the city and empire of Rome. The Story Having cleared the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It wasn’t their fault: Dido and Aeneas as a doomed couple
Over the last two millenia, it must have been the most famous extra-marital affair, and one of the best-known suicides – that of Dido Queen of Carthage and Aeneas, Trojan refugee and patriarch of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 75 – The Wrath of Polyphemus
In Ovid’s retelling of Virgil’s Aeneid, in Metamorphoses, Aeneas has just returned from the Underworld with the Sibyl of Cumae as his guide. Ovid then uses two of Ulysses’ men to narrate episodes from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 76 – Ulysses’ crew turned...
In his Metamorphoses, Ovid is retelling episodes from Virgil’s Aeneid, in which the hero Aeneas has reached the coast midway between Naples and Rome, at Caieta (Gaeta). There he went ashore, and two of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lovers die swimming the Hellespont: the tragedy of Hero and Leander
There can be no more hapless lovers than Hero and Leander. It’s bad enough that his parents would have disapproved, so the relationship has to be kept secret. But when the couple are separated by one...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 77 – Circe’s bad habit
Macareus, one of the survivors of the Odyssey, has been telling his account of the sojourn of Ulysses and his men on Circe’s island. Having told of their arrival and transformation into pigs, he...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Face that Launched a Thousand Artists: Helen (and Paris)
After the Virgin Mary, Helen is probably the most famous and most frequently-painted woman. She is also one over whom there has been no consensus: was she abducted, seduced, or seducer? Victim or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 78 – Aeneas in Italy, and...
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Achaemenides and Macareus have been telling stories from the Odyssey. With those complete, Aeneas (hero of Virgil’s Aeneid) moves on to found Alba, the precursor to Rome...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sappho and the perpetuation of legend
The little that we know of Sappho is, like the little that remains of her poetry, scant and fragmentary. She was arguably the greatest classical Greek lyrical poet, a lesbian of renown, but was alleged...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 79 – Pomona Seduced and...
With Aeneas transformed into the god Indiges, Ovid lists a succession of rulers of Latium and Alba, which had been founded by Aeneas, until he reaches King Proca, who prompts his next stories of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 80 – Romulus and Hersilia...
As Ovid reaches the end of Book 14 of his Metamorphoses, he has to sweep quickly through the early history of Rome. With King Proca dead, the storyline moves on to Romulus. The Story Ovid tells us that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 81 – Pythagoras and...
Ovid opens the fifteenth and final book of his Metamorphoses by continuing his account of the early rulers of Rome. With the apotheosis of Romulus, the next is his successor Numa, whom he uses as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 82 – The death of Numa, and...
In the final book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, King Numa, successor to Romulus the founder of Rome, had travelled to Crotona to learn the doctrines of Pythagoras. The Story After Numa had learned the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 83 – Augury and pestilence
As Ovid nears the end of the last book of his Metamorphoses, he has just told of the transformation of King Numa’s inconsolable widow Egeria into a spring. He still has some key moments in Roman...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 84 – The death of Julius...
Once the god Aesculapius is ensconced in Rome, Ovid is ready to round off his Metamorphoses with salient points from the life of Julius Caesar, and links to the contemporary emperor, Augustus. These...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 85 – The Age of Augustus
With Julius Caesar transformed into a star following his assassination, Ovid ends the fifteenth and final book of his Metamorphoses with some remarks in praise of his current emperor, Augustus, and his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, The best of the second half...
For the last seven months, I have worked through each of the stories in the second half of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, summarising their verbal narrative and showing some of the best paintings which tell...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, The best of the second half...
This is the second of two articles summarising the very best stories and finest paintings from the second half of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The first, covering Nessus, Deianira and Hercules through to the...
View Article