The history behind the myth of Jupiter and Europa, written in 50 BCE by Ovid, has been told and illustrated about for centuries now with Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn depicting the myth in a very elegant way as well as staying true to the history, found in other cultures and art work, and to how the myth is portrayed in Metamorphoses. By staying true to the original Latin myth, Rembrandt was able to demonstrate his knowledge of the language and location, but also create a visually accurate painting titled The Abduction of Europa. In the following sections, I will discuss the links between Metamorphoses and Rembrandt’s The Abduction of Europa by explaining the similarities and differences between them. In Metamorphoses, the Roman poet Ovid …show more content…
On the beach you can clearly see a flower necklace that was dropped from a companion's hand. In Ovid, Jupiter was said to have presented “his horns [so they could be] twined with fresh flowers” (Lombardo & Johnson, 2010, pp. 60 - 61). This does fall within the myth told by Ovid, but the beach is said to have been a place where young Tyrian girls played, but it is depicted much more as a small sandy area next to a trail or path to the city of Tyre. There are two other main differences between Rembrandt’s painting and the myth told in Ovid. The first is, in Ovid, there is no mention of any other companions on the beach with Europa during the abduction. The second is, earlier in the poem the beach is said to have only been visited by young Tyrian girls, but there is a male standing on his horse drawn chariot with the look of shock in the painting. There are many theories on who this man may be but I believe that his mystery man watching over the girls is Cadmus. This is because Cadmus is later told by the king Agenor to go and save Europa with the threat of exile if he
Ovid, Pieter Brueghel and W. H. Auden have (inadvertently) created a lineage convenient to these demands. In Ovid's myth "Concerning the Fall of Icarus" from Metamorphoses[i], he created a character that has become an icon, several millennia later. Pieter Brueghel adopted the icon in the sixteenth century for his painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, which then received famous treatment in the twentieth century by W. H. Auden in his poem "Musée Des Beaux Arts." These three works provide a beautiful, laboratory-quality arena in which to apply various deconstructive ideas: Jacques Derrida's theories of translation and the "dangerous supplement" and Roland Barthes' conception of the myth as language. However, such an inheritance necessarily extends to include the critical work that draws it together.
It is understandable that Vout took on a discursive tone when attempting to explain her point of view regarding the depictions of the youths in the Hellenistic age. The subject’s content is far too broad to be encompassed within a small range of thinking. This observation is evident in Vout’s temporary straying from the main points to wider subjects; however, she always brings her tangents back to the principal objectives. The primary ideas that she focuses on concern the rendering of children in art forms during Hellenistic times. This idea is then divided into differen...
I found The Raising of Lazarus and Annunciation to be interesting pieces on their own as well as to be compared. At face value, these paintings do not appear to contain many contrasting features. However, by examining these paintings closely, one can conclude that paintings with similar themes, mediums, and time periods can still differ in countless ways. Light, medium, subject, color, space, and viewpoint are just a few of the characteristics that can be considered when analyzing Wtewael and Caliari’s works. It is imperative that observers of art take a deeper look into the different features of artwork in attempt to uncover the intentions of the artist.
Hitchen’s recounts the history of why the sculptures landed in Britain’s hands in the first place—British ambassador Lord Elgin is the culprit, having sold “half the cast… [in order to] pay off his many debts.” In starting his claim with the short summary of the incident, Hitchen is able to enlighten the audience that Britain is wrongfully withholding the sculpture from its rightful owner; Greece is robbed from one of its finest works.
Brown, Jonathan. On the Meaning of Las Meninas. In Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Painting (1978). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Oftentimes the lens we use when interpreting any art is based on our interpretation of the truth of the story – if a story is perceived as historically accurate, we look at the story as co...
The islands of Circe and Calypso in Homer’s Odyssey are places where Odysseus’ most challenging problems occur. In contrast to battles with men, Cyclops, or animals, sexual battles with women are sometimes much more difficult to win. These two female characters are especially enticing to Odysseus because they are goddesses. Though it is evident that Odysseus longs to return to Penelope in Ithaka, it sometimes appears that he has lost vision of what life was like with a wife, a son, and with thousands of people who regard him as King. Although his experiences on the islands of these goddesses were similar in that he was retained from Ithaka for the longest periods of his adventure, these goddesses and the ways that Odysseus reacts to his experiences with them represent two very different aspects of Odysseus’ life and disposition in life.
In the Bard of Avon’s tragic drama Othello there resides imagery of all types, sizes and shapes. Let us look at the playwright’s offering in this area.
While walking the Greek Art Section in the Metropolitan Museum, people could easily be captivated by the grandiosity of one Archaic Period sculpture named Kouros(Youth), as you could see in figure 2, a beautiful male nude stone statue. Although it is true that, at the first glance, most people would mistreat this statue as an Egyptian one, for its straight and simple style, which derives from the Sinai Peninsula, this statue is actually from Athen, the center of Greek. Nevertheless, this similarity still arouses people’s curiosities: why and how the Archaic Period Greek statues resembled with the Egyptian one? Is there any other culture also influenced the Greek Art? Thus, this essay is going to discuss how two main foreign cultures: the Egyptian culture and the Ionic culture influenced the Archaic Period Greek Art.
Moreover, the detailed description in lines 1985 to 1986 allows the readers to almost feel the powerful wind rushing through the hallways and hear the temple’s gates rattling. Arguably, the sense of smell is elicited through the vivid descriptions of stables and ships burning in the background (2000, 2017). In response to Palamon’s prayers, the rings that hung on the temple doors clattered, evoking readers’ sense of sound. Unlike Venus, the knight recounts Mars’s alter in a manner that creates more distance between the observing reader and the god himself. In fact, he pays careful attention to use the phrase “I saw” as he was describing the painting in the background. Nevertheless, literary synesthesia exists within the description of Mars’s alter, and the distancing the knight creates between reader and Mars allows for the knight to project his own unsettled sense of fear onto the readers. By the final stanza in the knight’s account of Mars’s alter, we
We are fortunate to have recovered many ancient artworks that give us a glance into the everyday lives of ancient civilizations. It’s hardly believable that two works of art from different regions and time periods would have anything in common. While the “Virgin and Child” and “Dionysus and Pan” sculptures have different artistic styles, as “Virgin and Child” is in the mannered style of the late gothic era, while “Dionysus and Pan” sculpture is influenced by Greek art with elements of Roman verism, they are also similar as they both show intimate and loving interactions between the subjects and share similar composition.
Overall, it is worth arguing that the Toilette of Venus and Death of Socrates provides insight on the world that Jordan wants to join. Additionally, it is evident that Jourdain wants to the aristocrats in the 17th century world and this is evidenced by the theme of love as the main subject matter. In connection to this, Boucher’s paintings and David’s involves the uses the Rococo and Neo-classicism styles respectively. These styles depict some of the critical styles in the two
Peter Paul Ruben’s thorough understanding of Italian Renaissance art and Flemish Traditional art became very apparent in 1604-05 with the oil on canvas composition The Fall of Phaeton, . The Fall of Phaeton is about Helios, the Greek god that rode the chariot of the sun, who bore a boy, Phaeton, by a mortal mother. Aided by the recklessness of juvenility, Phaeton deceived his father into allowing him take the chariot. The horses at once bolted out, searing nearly anything in their way with the sun's heat because Phaeton was half mortal meaning he was too weak to control the mighty horses. As the sun tumbles across the sky, Mother Earth calls to Z...
The difference between the way Homer and Ovid present the gods and their relation to human being is that in Homer, the gods are more tough on the humans than in The Metamorphoses. In The Iilad, some gods were focused on returning Odysseus home while some were trying to stop him in his tracks. This story also focuses more on environment and symbolism because of the way the story is written. In Metamorphoses, the gods seem to care more about human beings. They show stronger emotions towards them. You can see this through all of the theme changes that occur in the story. They penalized people who were wicked and reward those that were piety. Metamorphoses set the tone in Book I, when the gods punished Lycaon for trying to kill Jupiter in his
After the plague in Europe subdued during the beginning of the fourteenth century it took a while for the people to start new and change their lives including their art. The paintings and sculptures during the Renaissance period left great influence to the artists of the future generations. The great legends that were remembered most for their art, during the beginning of the Renaissance and the end, were amazing and all of them influenced either each other or other artists. This essay will be informing about the people that made new kinds of the paintings and sculptures and when they came in the Renaissance period, also on how it changed the ideas and thoughts of the Europeans on humanism, mannerism, and symbolism.