Sneak Preview Myth and Art in Ekphrasis By Patrick Hunt Included in this preview: • Copyright Page • Table of Contents • Excerpt of Chapter 1 For additional information on adopting this book for your class, please contact us at 800.200.3908 x501 or via e-mail at [email protected] Sneak Preview Myth and Art in Ekphrasis 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. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5 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.