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Ariadne: Titian, Ancient Painting, and Catullus Gail Trimble

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Ariadne: Titian, Ancient Painting, and Catullus Gail Trimble Depicting and describing (Bacchus and) Ariadne: Titian, ancient painting, and Catullus Gail Trimble itian’s ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’, an oil painting created in the 1520s for an Italian ducal palace, now hangs in the National Titian (Tiziano Vecelli, c. T 1490–1576) was one of the most Gallery in London. In his sixty-fourth poem, Catullus claims to important members of the ‘Venetian’ describe a picture of a very similar scene. Here Gail Trimble school of painting that flourished in the sixteenth century. He was an explores how looking at the painting and the poem together can extremely versatile painter, equally help us to appreciate the ways in which writers and visual at home with portraits, landscapes, artists use their distinctive art forms to respond to Classical or, as here, mythological and reli- gious themes. myth and to each other. Standing in front of Titian’s ‘Bacchus and ing a picture, you would now be telling a looking at whom. While Theseus moves Ariadne’ in the National Gallery, how story. away from Ariadne – sometimes not with- would you describe it? You might start by out a glance back at her – she either stares talking about the overall visual impression Theseus, Ariadne, and Bacchus in intensely at his departing ship, or, still it makes: its bright colours and dramatic Roman wall-painting asleep, is in a position of vulnerability, action. You would probably then describe seeing nothing at all. She is just as vulner- its figures: perhaps first the near-naked The part of Ariadne’s story that takes place able in the pictures in which Bacchus finds young man jumping from his chariot and on Naxos is represented in several wall- her asleep and looks at her: here, as when the woman turning round to look at him, paintings that survive from Pompeii and Ariadne is awake and gazing at Theseus, and then the crowd filling most of the Herculaneum. However, not all of them the gaze represents erotic desire. painting, including women with musical choose to depict the same moment that instruments, a bearded man wrapped in a Titian does, or even exactly the same Catullus 64 and its picture of Ariadne snake, a boy with the legs of a goat, a pair version of events. of cheetahs, a dog. If you know the rele- One possibility was to show the treach- Although these Roman paintings proba- vant Classical mythology, you might go erous Theseus creeping onto his ship as bly date from not long before Pompeii and further, explaining that the young man is Ariadne lies innocently sleeping behind Herculaneum were destroyed in A.D. 79, it a god, Bacchus or Dionysus, accompanied him. Another, exemplified by a painting is likely that they show us ways of repre- as usual by maenads, satyrs, and Silenus, from Herculaneum now in the British senting Ariadne in a picture that Roman arriving on the island of Naxos to discover Museum (see p. 16), was to represent audiences might have been familiar with Ariadne, a mortal heroine who will Ariadne looking out, often pointing or in the 50s B.C., when Catullus wrote his become his divine wife. weeping, as Theseus sails away. But most sixty-fourth poem. At that stage you might say why pictures of Bacchus discovering Ariadne Catullus is most famous for his love Ariadne found herself on Naxos. She has do not illustrate the next logical stage in poetry and often obscene invectives, but been abandoned there by her faithless the story, with the god interrupting the he also wrote longer poems in more lover Theseus, so the tiny ship visible over heroine’s mourning as in Titian’s painting. ‘important’ genres. Catullus 64 is the her left shoulder must be his. And what Instead, Bacchus arrives – with his longest, but at just over 400 lines is still had happened between Ariadne and maenads and other followers – while very short for its genre, mythological epic. Theseus before their relationship ended so Ariadne still sleeps, as in the painting from It tells the story of the wedding of Peleus disastrously? You might explain that Pompeii on p. 16. In this version, Ariadne and Thetis, the parents of Achilles; but for Ariadne was a Cretan princess, and had will not wake to disappointment and the narrator of the poem, the most impor- fallen in love with Theseus and helped him misery, but, presumably, will immediately tant aspect of this wedding seems to be the to kill the Minotaur which her father forget Theseus’ betrayal as she begins her picture of Ariadne woven or embroidered Minos kept in the Labyrinth. Noticing the new life with her divine husband. on the coverlet of the couple’s marriage stars in the sky, you might also explain that Ariadne’s sleep, which gives Theseus bed. More than half the poem is an ecphra- after the events of this picture, Bacchus his opportunity to desert her, is important sis (Greek for ‘description’) of this cover- will honour Ariadne by turning her crown for a central concern of these paintings: let. into a constellation. Rather than describ- the way they deal with gazes, with who is Instead of mentioning the artist’s 15 colours or technique, this description goes you. the unnamed narrator of Catullus 64 with straight to Ariadne herself: the ‘Catullus’ of Catullus’ personal poetry We suddenly discover that this picture – whether he is unhappy (in love?) Thesea cedentem celeri cum classe tuetur doesn’t look like the Herculaneum paint- himself. indomitos in corde gerens Ariadna furores, ing after all, but includes Bacchus and a necdum etiam sese quae uisit uisere credit, large group of maenads, which Catullus Gail Trimble teaches Latin language and utpote fallaci quae tum primum excita somno describes. Perhaps it looks a bit like literature at Trinity College, Oxford. She desertam in sola miseram se cernat harena another wall-painting from Pompeii, now recently received a research fellowship (53–7) known only from a nineteenth-century from the AHRC to work on a commentary print, in which Bacchus arrives behind Ariadne sees Theseus departing with on Catullus 64, and she loves Italian Ariadne as she looks out to sea. But in that his swift ship, bearing in her heart Renaissance art. painting, Bacchus and his friends stand uncontrollable fury; nor yet can she quietly, as if not yet wanting to disturb believe she sees what she is seeing: no Ariadne. In the picture as described by wonder, since just then woken from Catullus, though, the bacchants are toss- deceiving sleep she sees herself, poor ing the limbs of a calf about and playing thing, abandoned on the lonely sand. screeching music. Even ‘in another part’ It seems that this picture looks like the of the picture, it is incredible that Ariadne painting from Herculaneum, with the has not noticed them. despairing Ariadne looking out at the Returning to Titian’s painting, we can departing Theseus. The narrator is clearly see how the artist has used Catullus’ text. struck by Ariadne’s unhappiness, even As well as Ariadne’s fallen clothes and becoming emotional himself and calling Bacchus’ ‘flying’ leap, Titian includes her ‘poor thing’. He presumably infers this every detail of Catullus’ description of the unhappiness from Ariadne’s appearance, bacchants: the bits of dead calf, the and he is also already inferring other parts snakes, the specific instruments (cymbals, of the story: what has just happened horns, and tambourines) and, in the back- (Ariadne has just woken up) and what is ground, the wicker basket carrying myste- about to happen (she doesn’t yet believe rious Dionysiac objects. But Titian reacts her eyes, but she soon will). to Catullus more polemi-cally, too. His Although he includes some more physi- Ariadne is not still looking at Theseus cal description, notably seeming to enjoy while the noise and excitement happens describing how all Ariadne’s clothes have behind her. Perhaps in a comment on fallen off, this narrator soon wants to give Catullus’ lack of realism – as well as a a further explanation of Ariadne’s move giving Ariadne just a little more emotions. To do so, he stops describing the power – she has half-turned round to look picture and simply begins the story of how at her future husband. Theseus came to Crete, using the epic formula ‘they say’ to show that his source Catullus’ tendentious description is now the verbal tradition of mythology, not the picture on the coverlet. Looking at these ancient and Renais-sance Most of Catullus’ ecphrasis, then, is not paintings along-side Catullus 64 allows us actually a description, but an epic story, to appreciate just how strange is the marked with several more instances of poem’s description of a picture that, it ‘they say’. We hear how Theseus killed the turns out, looks very like Titian’s. Where Minotaur, and then, back on Naxos, how you might have begun by describing a Ariadne made a long speech ending with busy, crowded picture full of different a curse on him, fulfilled when Jupiter figures, Catullus’ narrator spends nine- made Theseus forget to change his black tenths of his ecphrasis ignoring nine- sails to white ones, causing his father tenths of the picture and focusing only on Aegeus to commit suicide in the belief that the motionless Ariadne. And the story he he was dead. This story takes about 200 tells about her covers only her past, not her lines to tell, and many readers probably future with Bacchus. forget that it began with a description of a Perhaps this simply means that picture.
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