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Myth and Art in Ekphrasis By Patrick Hunt

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B P H S U Copyright © 2010 University Readers Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfi lming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of University Readers, Inc.

First published in the United States of America in 2010 by Cognella, a division of University Readers, Inc.

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Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-60927-777-2 Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments vii

Chapter 1 1 Aeneid XII.383–440 as Inspiration for Ancient Art: The Roman Wall Painting of the Surgeon Iapyx from Casa de Sirico, Pompeii

Chapter 2 7 Glykon’s Farnese Herakles Sculpture as Myth Narrative

Chapter 3 13 Trajan and Dante: Trajan’s Roman Decennial Bust in the British Museum

Chapter 4 17 Adam Elsheimer’s Visual Narrative of Philemon and Baucis (c. 1609–10) and Arborisms in Ovid’s ‘Baucis and Philemon’, Metamorphoses 8.620–720

Chapter 5 23 Rembrandt’s The Abduction of Europa, 1632 and Ovid’s Metamorphoses II.849–59

Chapter 6 33 Propagandizing in Early Byzantine Art: Justinian and Theodora at Ravenna Chapter 7 45 Abbé Suger and a Medieval Theory of Light in Stained Glass: Lux, Lumen, Illumination

Chapter 8 53 Homer and Greek Myth in Gustav Klimt’s Pallas Athene of 1898

Chapter 9 63 Riza-i ‘Abbasi and Poetry in Safavid Persian Painting

Chapter 10 67 Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Adam and Eve of 1526: Text, Iconography and Hermeneutics

Chapter 11 73 Homer’s Odyssey in Art: Sirens from Greek Vases to Waterhouse

Chapter 12 79 Oresteia, Justice, and the Furies Through Art

Chapter 13 85 Salome: Death and the Maiden from Lush Romanticism to Lascivious Expressionism

Bibliography 95

Endnotes 105

Index 123 Preface and Acknowledgments

“Death must not be a good thing, for if it were, the gods would have it too.” — Sappho

ythology is the place where imagination and historical memory Mintersect, where stars not only have names like humans but are al- lowed to tell their stories. Mythology has inspired countless generations of humanity for millennia, from the parent culture of a myth to cultures fairly removed in time, space, and language. Herodotus exercised restraint when contrasting mythos and historia: “the mythology of the gods demanded a measure of pious restraint that he felt free to abandon when dealing with heroic fi gures of the human kind.”1 Poets, artists, historians, and philosophers have reinterpreted the stories in many ways, and Greek and Roman myths in particular here are rich in paradox and narrative wisdom that artists have also visually illustrated, often depicting the crux or dramatic climax of a story in close detail. Biblical mate- rial also provides a wealth of mythological material for similar reinterpreta- tions for artists or writers. Whether in language with fi gures like similes and metaphors, or in visual imagery from Greek and Roman sculptures, Roman mosaics, Roman wall-paintings at Pompeii, and other ancient media, re- telling of mythology in parallel versions often borrow from each other and infl uence each other. For example, in this brief book a wide range of paintings from the cinquecento and seicento to the nineteenth century are discussed as examples. Selected artists who used ekphrasis from Renaissance and Baroque through the British Aesthetic painters and Vienna Secession are featured, including

Preface and Acknowledgments vii Dürer, Cranach, Elsheimer, Rembrandt, Doré, Klimt, Waterhouse, or anon- ymous ancient vase painters, mosaicists, and sculptors. Each of these art- ists individually reinterpreted seminal texts of poets and thinkers such as Homer, Plato, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, or biblical material in idiosyncratic but memorable ways. Indirect as it might seem, Gospel biblical material inspired modern writers like Flaubert, whose sensuous stories were source material for both Oscar Wilde and composers like Richard Strauss. Art inspires art, and the more powerful the myth in reaching into human experience, the more times and ways it is told and retold. Whether ancient or modern in its applications, ekphrasis is an ancient Greek word that essentially has to do with literary versions inspiring visual artistic versions, or vice versa, since poets, writers, and historians also write about art as here. Pliny the Elder in the fi rst century CE was famous for descriptions of ancient art in his sweeping Historia Naturalis, and many writers followed his example, including Pausanias a century later. One of the most famous ekphrastic works of antiquity was a second-third century CE work by Philostratus titled Eikones (Greek, or Imagines in Latin), although it seems this seminal work was added to by his descendant[s] of the same name. Th is was an infl uential text and became even more famous after it was translated by the publishing house of Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1503 and was then used by Renaissance artists like Fra Bartolommeo, Giulio Romano, and Titian as a verbal source for their ekphrastic paintings. Visual literacy can be as important as verbal literacy, and tracing these symbiotic infl uences and looking at their backgrounds are some of the primary foci of Patrick Hunt’s new book, Myth and Art in Ekphrasis. Acknowledgments are made here to sage colleagues like Sybille Ebert- Schiff erer of the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, Ian Jenkins at the British Museum in London, Jenny March in Oxford, Richard Martin at Stanford, whose exemplary scholarship and assistance are always both inspiring and immensely helpful. All errors in this book are my own. I also thank Jessica Knott at Cognella Academic Publishing for acting as competent midwife to this book and to Melissa Guertin for her art historical research assistance with the images in this book. Stanford University, Stanford, California Summer, 2010

viii Myth and Art in Ekphrasis Chapter 1 Aeneid XII.383–440 as Inspiration for Ancient Art: The Roman Wall Painting of the Surgeon Iapyx from Casa de Sirico, Pompeii

his famous Pompeian wall painting quoting the Aeneid is one of the Thighlights of the Museo Nazionale in Naples. From the Casa de Sirico, fi rst century BCE, it has been noted as a “singular case of literary illustra- tion,”2 no doubt because it appears to closely follow Virgil’s text. But while it is not exactly ekphrasis (verbal description of a work of art), it proves the practice fl owed in both directions. Another even earlier and more famous example of paintings derived from ancient literature—in this case Homer— is the Hellenistic Odyssey (Books X–XII) series in the Vatican,3 about which practice at the end of the fi rst century BCE Vitruvius writes that “ancient” artists painted “pictures of Odysseus wandering through countrysides.”4 As a painting style favored by Augustus in Rome where it originates,5 what painting subject could be more evocative of equal Augustan patronage than the Aeneid ? Th e primary questions briefl y addressed here are how closely does this painting follow its literary source and how does it deviate? Also, why might this scene in Aeneid XII.383–440 of a wounded Aeneas about to be healed be chosen as a subject? One of the best descriptions and analyses of this Aeneid literary text is by Noonan, who examines it as mythography.6 Here are some of the bridges—a few obvious; others subtle—between Virgilian text and painted image. Pictorial allusions include the close sequence of events briefl y described below. First, in both media the wounded Aeneas (vulnus XII.389) leaning on his spear (stabat ... fremens ingentem nixus in has- tam XII.398). Second, in both media he is attended by the hands of the old physician Iapyx, here balding and with graying beard (Iapyx ... manu medica XII.391–402). Th ird, in both media the hero is resolute in the presence of his weeping son Iulus and his soldiers (maerentis Iuli concursu, lacrimis im- mobilis XII.399–400). Fourth, in both media Venus herself arrives, bringing with her the healing Cretan herb dittany (Venus ... dictamnum ... carpit ab

Chapter 1 1 Ida ... detulit XII.411–417), although in the slightly deteriorated painting it is diffi cult to see what she holds in her left hand. But it can only be Venus here, not the least of which iconographic clues are her bare-breastedness and her pearl diadem symbolic of her marine birth.7 On the subtler side, the surgeon Iapyx kneels with his outer garments wrapped around his thighs and not impeding his exploratory surgery, like a good doctor “in Paeonian fashion” following bedside medical precedent (Paeonium in morem XII.401).

Fig. 1 Pompeian Wall Painting of Aeneas and Iapyx, Casa de Sirico, Pompeii.

2 Myth and Art in Ekphrasis Elaborating on the subtler side, Paeon is an old god of medicine, and Iapyx was a son of Iasus and a favorite of Apollo who was his patron and source for his gift of medicine.8 Iapyx chose “healing arts” rather than Apollo’s arrows, ironically pos- sibly alluded here by antithesis since Aeneas was wounded by a random arrow (sagitta XII.319) or ambiguously a spear (see below), almost like Achilles except not shot by anyone known and not a mortal wound, although if Venus does not come soon to her son’s aid, the Latins and Turnus may triumph against Aeneas and the Trojans. Virgil, in typical fashion, interconnects his thematic use of arrow wounding from a divine Apollo (smitten by Love’s arrows for a mortal Iapyx) to Iapyx himself (out of fi lial love) rejecting far-shooting archer god Apollo’s arrows for healing human (in this case Aeneas) arrow wounds where divine maternal love of Venus for Aeneas provides the ultimate healing. Th e medicinal blood-congealing herb dictamnum is also named after Mt. Dicte (also Diktys among other variants), the alternate Cretan locus along with Mt. Ida of Jupiter’s birth. Cretan dittany (Origanum dictamnus), accurately described by Virgil as having purple fl owers, was extolled by doctors from Hippocrates to Dioscorides and beyond for healing wounds and was also called artemidion in Greece in respect to the goddess whose arrows caused the very wounds her plant would also heal if she so chose.9 Here dittany is also symbolic of Jupiter’s hand in the destiny of Aeneas both in overall as well as small incremental details as Virgil alludes here. More on Paeon follows shortly. Some of the consonance—again a few obvious and others subtler—be- tween Virgilian text and almost contemporary Pompeian image include specifi c medical tools. One artistic convention used includes a surgeon’s tool in the hand of Iapyx, variously argued as a forceps (in forcipe) or scalpel (scal- pellum)—known surgical tools that both regularly show up in archaeological

Chapter 1 3 examples of Roman surgeon’s kits.10 Since forceps is the word mentioned in the poetic text (forcipe XII.404), this would be the most logical tool for reasons given below. Modern medical mention of the painting quotes Virgil’s text in its use of forceps where others interpret this painting shows a scalpellum although the best commentaries almost always interpret a forceps here.11 Rolfe Humphries translates this section of the work of Iapyx to “cut around it [the iron arrow shaft head embedded in the wound],” to “probe” for the iron (ferrum) spear point or arrowhead (spicula XII.403).12 It is most likely the medical tool is iron based given the white hue of the tool used in the painting. Th is modern translation may be expanded because the text is ambiguous about the weapon used against Aeneas. A scalpel might assist in probing for the embedded iron projectile but forceps would be better at ex- tracting the weapon head. Th us, the Pompeian painting here is a fairly clear ekphrasis as the painting matches the text best if forceps are depicted. Th is author has chosen the type of medical tool painted here as forceps because: a) textual consonance; b) in the way the tool is held at the rear end; c) the circular joint in the middle; and d) because in the best close-up versions of the painting image, the two distinct colors—fl esh and olive—of Aeneas’ leg and Iapyx’s shirt sleeve can be seen through the open forceps handle grips. A few additional textual points are perhaps interesting but not necessar- ily important for elucidating the painting. Divine confl ict and resolution is one of Virgil’s underlying plot impellers.13 Th e random weapon projectile injuring Aeneas may symbolize Juno’s simultaneously hidden but revealed enmity, shielded by the narrator for the sake of indemnifying silence, and similar to the oak-clasped weapon later withheld from Aeneas until the very end, but here balanced by Jupiter’s equally- Fig. 3 Roman forceps copy, 1st century CE invisible presence in (House of the Surgeon, Pompeii) the symbolic dittany. Courtesy of Claude Moore Health Science On the other hand, in Library, University of Virginia.

4 Myth and Art in Ekphrasis keeping with the tradition of dittany (or artemidion), has Aeneas somehow off ended Diana (Artemis) whose arrow it might have been that wounded him or is it “merely” a Jupiter allusion? Also, although Virgil uses a variant of it earlier in Aeneid VII.769, Paeonium is an obscure word, possibly here also a trope for Apollo Medicus,14 but the name Paeon is much older and originally Greek. In the Odyssey (IV.232), Homer calls doctors Paionoi, as the sons of Paion. Paeon was thus an older Olympian god of medicine than even the initially mortal but later divine Asklepios-Aesculapius himself.15 Th at Virgil makes Iapyx aged is a subtle allusion to this Homeric tradition. Appropriate here, Edelstein diff erentiates that when physicians were under divine tutelage, they were sons of Paeon; when healing crafts were merely under “human exertion,” they were sons of Asklepios (Aesculapius).16 Th is subtlety is borne out by Venus’s appearance with dittany and Iapyx’s decla- ration that it was a divine healing (XII.425 & ff .).

CONCLUSION In conclusion, this well-known Roman painting is directly inspired by the Aeneid and is a fairly faithful quotation thereof, demonstrating the popular- ity of Virgil not long after his own lifetime, probably within half a century. Its overall fi delity to the poetic text also suggests how much Virgil’s literary reputation had accrued within little more than a generation, “at the height of popularity.”17 Perhaps the most diffi cult question to answer is why this particular Aeneid vignette was chosen for a painting subject, because it is apparently the only surviving example in Roman art. Was it the choice of the artist or a Vedius family member (possibly a doctor)? Does the painting somehow glorify human medicine as a semidivine art or more the divine hand behind all healing, which Iapyx certainly acknowledges in the Aeneid as a mouthpiece of Virgil himself? Th ese are all possible queries worth pursuing in this unique Roman wall painting.

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