Five of the best stories and finest paintings from the first half of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the tragic lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, to the Calydonian boar hunt.
Poussin
A group of popular mythical heroes set out to kill a fearsome wild boar sent by Diana in vengeance. It turns into farcical tragedy, and some superb paintings.
One of Ovid’s best stories of a tragic end to a blissful marriage, with superb paintings by Veronese, Poussin, Rubens, and others.
A link between the downfall of Medea and a series of stories about the hero Theseus, this was a subject for the Prix de Rome. Includes a little-known Poussin.
Are they part of a narrative, or staffage? Do they provide scale, or enhance the effect? Are the figures part of the landscape, or even the landscape itself?
Like Poussin, most of his works are strongly narrative in intent. Did he paint any pure landscapes, or are all his figures actors in his stories?
Would such a great narrative painter really paint landscapes which lack a story?
Wherever you are on earth, you should be able to see the constellation of Orion, when clouds permit. What was his story? Only one painting helps.
What are accessories or ‘staffage’, what narrative, and what intrinsic to the reading and style of a landscape?
Who was Ovid, and how did he come to write so much on mythology? Illustrated with some fine paintings of his life by Poussin, Delacroix, and Turner.
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