Painting inspired by Ovid‘s Metamorphoses

KIK ZEILER is a DUTCH artist and was born in 1945.
He is a realistic painter and strongly rejects abstract art.
In his painting, Zeiler shows Narziss reflected in the water. In Ovid's metamorphosis "Narziss ", the beautiful Narziss is reflected in the water, but when suddenly a leaf falls into the water, his reflection blurs and he frightens to death, whereupon he turns into a daffodil .
Picture source:https://www.ovid-verlag.de/bilder_gross/Kik%20Zeiler%20-%20Narcissus.jpg
(Tara)

Drawing inspired by the metamorphosis „Medusa“

PABLO PICASSO was a SPANISH artist and lived in the epoch of surrealism, cubism and expressionism. He was born on October 25, 1881 in Málaga and died on April 8, 1973.
Today he is still one of the most significant artists in the world .
Picasso has drawn a part of the fight for Phineus fiancee, Andromeda. After Andromeda was rescued by Perseus, he insisted on taking she with him and they got into a fight. It comes from the metamorphosis "Medusa" by Ovid.
Source: https://www.galeriefetzer.de/index.php?id=603
(Tara)

Poem inspired by Ovid´s Metamorphosen

Alexander Sergejewitsch PUSCHKIN is a RUSSIAN Poet and he was born 1799 in Moskau.
Puschkin is one of the most famous poets in Russia.
In his Poem K*** he is probably talking about a woman. It is about how he first saw her and what her beauty did with him. He were out of his mind and all his sences focused on her beauty. But after time passed he started to forget her apperance and how her voice sounded.
Because of this he has got listless and his mind gor bleak.
But then he saw her again and everything chanced. He felt love and his heart warmed up.
In Ovid´s Metamorphosis transformations are the main aspect of all his writings. In Puschkin's poem the tranformation does not refer to a human being but to how love or beauty can change/transform a humans acting and how much beauty or love influences us.
(Mascha)

"ovidius moralizatus"

I chose the book "ovidius moralizatus" of Petrus BERCHORIUS. Berchorius was a FRENCH benedictine monk who lived in the middle ages. The book "ovidius moralizatus" was published 1340 and should be a Christian interpretation of the Ovidian metamorphoses. That is the reason why I chose this book. I think it very interesting how Petrus Berchorius interpreted the metamorphoses in the middle age on the christian level. For example, he depicted the dying Pyramus as Christ on the cross or Eurydike as the sinful Eve. (Martha)

A play inspired by Ovid´s metamorphoses

William SHAKESPEARE was an ENGLISH poet and playwriter who lived between 1564 and 1616. He is one of the world's most famous artists.
His comedy "A Midsummer Night´s dream", that is first played in the 1590s, is a magical story that plays in Athens and in the forest near by. Especially the characters Puck and the fairies are a reference to Ovid´s metamorphoses. The character Nick Bottom has his head transformed into a donkey's head. That idea is taken from Ovid´s story about Midas, whose head got trasformed by Apollon. there is also the play "Pyramus and Thisbe" played during the piece. That is a story written by Ovid.
I chose "A Midsummer Night´s Dream" because of all the references existing.
(Sophia)

Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Apollo and Daphne (1622 – 1625)

BERNINI was an ITALIAN sculptor and architect of the Baroque. Many of his scuptures were inspired by ancient mythology. "Apollo and Daphne", made for the cardinal Scipione Borghese in Rome, is one example. The story behind the sculpture is told in Ovid's metamorphoses: Apollo was chasing Daphne (like Pan was chasing Syrinx). In her desperation, Daphne asked her father, the river good Peneius, to change her appearance in order to save her from Apollo's thread. Daphne's request was fulfilled: She became a laurel tree. When Apollo embraced her, he could still feel her fear and tremble - the trembling of the branches of the laurel.
(Moritz)

Parmigianino: Room of Diana and Actaeon (1524)

Parmigiano is an ITALIAN painter of the MANIERISM (born on January 11, 1503).
His painting explains the story of Diana and Actaeon from Ovid´s "Metamorphoses". Ovid tells how Actaeon during a hunt happened to see the goddess Diana taking a bath, naked. He stares at her and she becames so angry that she turns him into a stag. Then Actaeon is killed by his own hunting dogs. The ambiguity of the picture is Parmigianio´s very own style and in the middle of the picture you can see a mirror, in which the viewer can see himself surrounded by all of the decoration.
(Moritz)

Pietro Bianchi (1694-1740) – Pyramus and Thisbe

Gregorio Pagani ( 1558 – 1605) – Pyramus and Thisbe

Drawing inspired by the metamorphosis "Arachne"

The picture was drawn in 1861 by Paul Gustave DORÉ. Paul Gustave Doré lived from 1832 to 1883 and was a FRENCH painter and graphic artist. The picture is supposed to represent the myth Arachne. The myth is about Arachne who was turned into a spider. I chose this picture because the myth was depicted very well. It is immediately obivous that this is a woman who has been turned into a spider.

(Martha)

Bertolt Brecht's play "Der gute Mensch von Sezuan"

Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956) was an influential GERMAN playwright, librettist and poet of the 20th century. Brecht founded and implemented the epic theatre or "dialectical theatre". One of his most famous works is "Der gute Mensch von Sezuan" ("The Good Man of Sezuan"). The drama takes place in the Chinese province of Sezuan, but is to be understood as a parable after an explicit preliminary remark by Brecht, which means that Sezuan represents all places where people are exploited by human beings. Ovid's metamorphosis "Philemon and Baucis" might be the source. Here - like in Brecht's play - gods, in disguise, came to earth to find a good person. They are rejected and only a socially low person (Ovid: an old and poor couple; Brecht: a prostitute) is helpful and friendly.
(Leonie)

Où la vie se contemple tout est submergé - Paul Éluard

Paul Éluard was born on the 14th December 1895 in Saint Denis. He was a FRENCH poet and one of the founders of the SURREALIST movement. At the age of 16, he contracted tuberculosis, interrupted his studies, and remained hospitalized until April 1914 in the Clavadel sanatorium near Davos. A year before that he wrote his first poems in 1913. He married in 1917 and 1951 and wrote some poems about his wives.
This poem which called "Où la vie se contemple tout est submergé" is about his first wife and that the love makes everything around him seems like it disappears - "les vertiges au cœur des métamorphoses". (Paula)

Narzissus

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech(* 11. may 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia ; † 23. january 1989 ) was a Spanish Artist and one of the most famous ones in the 20th century.
The Picture represents Narciss as a young man as he sits next to the water and looks at his own reflection. Echo is in a cave behind Narcissus. On the other side you can see a hand holding an egg; a narcissus (now a flower) is growing out of it.

Wolf Biermann: "The ballad of the Prussian IKARUS"

Wolf Biermann is a GERMAN songwriter; he came from the working class. His father was a Jewish member of the German resistance against the Nazi regime; he was deported and murdered. Wolf Biermann, the son, born in Hamburg in 1936, moved to Eastern Germany (GDR) in 1953, because he wanted to live in the new "workers' and peasants' state".He studied philosophy and mathematics, but also worked at Bert Brecht's theatre "Berliner Ensemble", together with Bert Brecht and composer Hans Eisler, and began to write own songs and poems. He came into conflict with the East German political establishment, especially after the building of the wall (1961). He wasn't allowed to publish his songs any more. When he gave a concert in Cologne in 1976, the government of the GDR didn't allow him to come back and deprived him the citizenship. - Biermann still is a critical and political songwriter.

Thorvaldsen

Thorvaldsen
Albert Bertel THORVALDSEN was born at the 19th of November in year 1770 and died at the 25th of March in 1844.
He was a DANISH sculptor and lived in the epoque of NEO-CLASSICISM.
Among other things Thorvaldsen created persons of the metamorphoses by Ovid like for example Dionysos/Bacchus the God of wine (he occurs for example in the metamorphose of Pentheus and Bacchus) or Mercury the God of merchants and thieves (who was represented for example in "Aglauros, Mercury and Herse" and in the metamorphose of Io and Argus, telling the story of "Pan and Syrinx").
(Lilli)

information about Wolf Biermann's "Ikarus" (part 1)

Wolf Biermann, born in 1936 in Hamburg, moved to the GDR in 1959 where he began to publish his first songs. In ,,Die Ballade vom preußischen Ikarus“ he describes the ,, Icarus of Prussia“ and where you can find him: In a street (Friedrichstraße), on the railing of a bridge (Weidendammer Brücke) in Berlin, directly above the Spree (the biggest river in Berlin which was the border between East and West Berlin). The ,,Icarus of Prussia“ has grey wings made out of iron; in fact, he IS the iron eagle which is part of the railing. But this Icarus doesn't fly away, because he is tied to the railing with barbed wire which is turning into his skin, bones and the brain. "If you want to leave then you have to go like others before. But I will hang on this railing." (Oliver)

information about Wolf Biermann's "Ikarus" (part2)

Later, Wolf Biermann is naming himself ,,the Icarus of Prussia“ and he tells us his personal feelings about his lifetime in the GDR, indirectly.
From 1949 to 1990 Germany was divided into West Germany and East Germany.
East Germany was called DDR (in English German Democratic Republic)
It was a supervisory state. It was possible that you got observed in your own flat. From 1961 till 1989 there was a big 1400 km long wall seperating West Germany and East Germany. That´s why Biermann in his song talks about ,,a country in half“ (unser halbes Land). (Oliver)

information about Wolf Biermann's "Ikarus" (part3)

Biermann was born in Hamburg, but he moved to the GDR
when he was 17 years old, without his parents. He did this voluntarily because he wanted to help building a socialistic society. But he had to realize that citizens of the GDR couldn´t just leave the country for visiting their family in the Western part or going on vacation. They were captured.
That's why the first-person-narrator compares himself with Icarus. Icarus and his father Daedalus were caught by the king of Crete : Minos. He locked them up in a labyrinth.
The narrator is like Icarus and thus the labyrinth turns out to be the GDR.
(Oliver)

Triumph of Galatea by Raffaello Sanzio

The Triumph of Galatea is a fresco completed in 1514, that was realized by the Italian painter Raphael. According to the mythical tradition, the nymph Galatea was in love with the young Aci, but the cyclops Polyphemus had also fallen in love with her. Polyphemus, unable to make her fall in love with him, decided to throw a large rock against Aci who died under the weight of this. According to the story of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the great heart of Galatea shows itself when it transforms Aci's blood into a source.
I chose this picture because I believe that Raphael, introducing for example the red robe of the woman, and the symbols of the dolphins and the octopus explicitly refers to the concept of pure love promoted by the poet Ovid.
(Arianna P.)

Painting inspired by Ovid‘s Metamorphoses

I choose the painting "Narciso" by Caravaggio.
Caravaggio was an Italian artist of the Baroque period. He is famous for the role of light in his paintings. In this painting Caravaggio shows Narciso looking his face reflected on water. In Ovid's "Metamorphosis" Narciso is a really handsome boy and everybody falls in love with him, but he prefers to stay alone and to hunt, so he refuses all his suitors. One of them asks Nemesis for revenge, therefore he is convicted to fall in love with his own face reflected on water. Seeing he is unable to touch or catch it, he lets himself die and his death body is transformed in a beautiful flower, which takes his name.
(Bianca)

Juppiter and Europe- OVID'S METAMORPHOSES

This picture illustrate the myth of Juppiter and Europe narrated by Ovid: the latin God falls in love with a beautiful young girl called Europe, who uses to go to the beach with some friends. In order to kidnap her, Juppiter asks Mercutio to bring some oxen to the beach and he turns himselm into a beautiful ox too. The young girl is won by the beauty and the meekness of the animal and decides to sit on its back. Immediatelly the ox strarts running towards the sea.
(Sofia)

"Primavera"- Botticelli (Maryana)

For Ovid's theme, we should concentrate our attention on the right part of the painting.
There we can see Zefiro, the personification of the spring wind, blowing on Cloris, a nymph who he is madly in love with.
Zefiro gets Cloris pregnant and it results in her metamorphosis into Flora.
The last one is the personification of spring and in this painting is represented by a woman on a floral dress with a lot of plants forming a crow on her head.
Flora has a big belly representing that she is giving birth to the new season.

Pan and Syrinx by Peter Paul Rubens

Rubens, a Flemish painter (1577-1640) from Anversa, painted several scenes taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Some of these represent the myth of Pan and Syrinx and were realized by Rubens and his studio, including another important Flemish painter who is Pieter Brueghel.
(Maria Adelaide)

Pan and Syrinx by Rubens

Maria Adelaide

Pan and Syrinx by Brueghel

Maria Adelaide

The Rape of Europe

Rubens was a prolific painter and many of his works have mythological subjects inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses
(Maria Adelaide)

Milky Way by Rubens

(Maria Adelaide)

Medusa by Caravaggio

Medusa is one of the most famous story told in the Metamorphoses. This painting was realised by the Italian artist Caravaggio in 1597. The work is characterized by his unique fascination with violence and realism. It's also said that in this face of the monster he represented his own.
(Maria Adelaide)

Antonio Allegri (Correggio): Giove e Io (1532-33)

Correggio is one of the most famous painter of Italian Renaissance, at the base of Mannerism.
This paint is part of a cycle of paintings called "Amori di Giove"( Jupiter's loves) that show Jupiter's prohibited loves and his transformations in four forms (eagle, swan, cloud and gold rain) to get his pleasure source.
(Alessia)

Tiziano, The Flaying of Marsyas

Tiziano (1490-1576) was an italian painter. He faces a bloody episode of the Metamorphoses: the satyr Marsyas, after having challenged Apollo in a musical competition, loses, and is skinned alive by the god. The painter, who portrayed himself in the guise of King Midas, the elderly and thoughtful man on the right, represented with this work the end of the primitive civilization linked to Dionysus and the satyrs, and those of a new civilization, defined to the figure of Apollo and Zeus, symbol of order and justice. The brush strokes of Tiziano increase the pathos of the painting.
(Arianna M.)

Clytie by Louis Welden Hawkins

This is one of the most famous artworks painted by Louis Welden Hawkins, a German artist born in 1849 in Stuttgart.
He followed the Symbolism, an artistic movement developed in France, where he lived for a long period of his life. One of the themes of this artistic current is mysticism; here we have an example of it: this painting is inspired by the classical myth of Clytie and Apollo. In the story the nynph falls in love with Apollo that at first loves her back, but then he falls in love with Leucothea. Clytie takes her revenge to get Apollo back but after that she feels guilty and decide to stare naked at the sun without eating or drinking. After nine days and the gets transformed into a sunflower, that alway turns its head at the sun.
(Laura)

Painting inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses

It was painted by Evelyn De Morgan (30 August 1855 – 2 May 1919). She was an English painter associated to the Pre-Raphaelite Moviment.
It represents the myth of Cadmius and Harmonia : when Cadmus was obliged to quit Thebes, Harmonia accompanied him. When they came to the Enchelii, they assisted them in their war against the Illyrians, and conquered the enemy. Cadmus then became king of the Illyrians, but afterwards he was turned into a serpent. Harmonia, in her grief stripped herself, then begged Cadmus to come to her. As she was embraced by the serpent Cadmus, the gods then turned her into a serpent, unable to stand watching her in her dazed state.
I like this picture because it represents the moment before the transformation of Harmonia and the moment after the Cadmius' transformation .
(Camilla)

Narcisus

This picture, painted in 1597 by the italian painter Caravaggio, represents Narcisus, the protagonist of a myth narrated in Ovidius' Metamorphosis. The character has fallen in love with his image reflected in a river. In this picture Narcisus is painted in the exact istant before he falls in the river, dieing. His face is painted as if he knows he is destined to die but he continues to go on with his action: to kiss his love ( which is his image). Filippo

Narcissus (1890) by Jules-Cyrille Cavé.

Jules-Cyrille Cave was born in Paris 14th January 1859. He studied under Tony Robert-Fleury (1837-1912) a painter of historical genre and Professor of the Académie Julian .

Cave found early success in 1886. He painted portrait commissions, religious and allegorical subjects in the Salon tradition, young girls, genre and still life. Cave’s portraits of young girls and allegorical subjects were painted very much in Bouguereau’s vein, and he found success in France and the United States.
In this painting he pictures Narcissus leaning over a pond looking to his own reflection. Narcissus is surrounded by a flourished and vivid nature.
(Elia)

Danaë Titian

Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio known in English as Titian, was an Italian painter during the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school.

'Eco e Narciso' by John WIlliam Waterhouse

J. W. Waterhouse (1847-1917) was a neoclassic english painter. He painted more the 200 operas, especially in the category of classical mythology, but also of historical or literary subjects. "Eco e Narciso" is one of the paintings belonging to the series of the mythological genre. The painting is an oil on canvas and measures 109.2 cm by 189.2. It is part of the Victorian period collection of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. I really liked the way in which the painter represented the reflection of Narcissus on the water.
Andrea

Apollo and Daphne by Bernini

The sculpture shows a part of the myth of Apollo and Daphne narrated in the Metamorphoses by Ovid. The myth tell about Apollo who is in love with Daphne and tries to catch her. She rejects him and runs away and Apollo tries to catch her and follows her. While running Daphne prays his father to help her. When Apollo is about to reach Daphne she starts to turn into a tree.
Chiara

Tiresia

"Triumph of Bacco and Arianna" by Annibale Carracci

“Triumph of Bacco and Arianna” is a mannerist fresco realized in 1594 by the italian painter Annibale Carracci to celebrate the wedding between Ranuccio Farnese and Margherita Aldobrandini in Rome. The scene is quite complex, but the main subjects are Bacco and Arianna (on the left), sitting on a golden and a silver chariot, dragged by two tigers and two rams.
On the right there is a woman, probably Venus, and in the sky beneath four cherubs are flying around.
The fresco was created to celebrate love and the subject portrayed are a metaphor for the relationship between spiritual and sensual love.
Giacomo