Celebrating the bi-millennial of Ovid’s death at the far reaches of Tomis (as was similarly done a few years ago with the bi-millennial of Augustus’), the Scuderie del Quirinale, once the Papal palaces in Rome and a fascinating building in its own right, is currently hosting the exhibition “Ovid. Love, Myths and Other Stories” from 17 October 2018 — 20 January 2019.
You can already get a taste of how good it is by its guiding quotation, a cool neon retro script girdled around the alluring hips of Venus “Callipyge”. That is, Venus of the “beautiful booty” (as the sign says).
“Happy is he who consumes himself in the battles/scruples of Venus”.
Felice chi si consuma nelle battaglie di Venere.
Coupling this, the very first word (in the Italian version) of the title, “Loves” hints at another dimension of the fun of this exhibition. The curator decided not to write “Loves” into the singular Love, which simply implies the static, grammatically correct (in English) concept of love. Francesca Ghedini deliberately selected the plural version, which in Classical love elegy has an incredibly wide semantic meaning of the interactions with love: ranging from the “fights” of love to its “chains”, the “slavery” to the blissful happiness, the longing, the erotic, the heartbreak. This isn’t just a static exhibition that zooms into one aspect of Ovid.
It ambitiously tackles the whole conception of Ovid.
Ovid the contemporary poet.
And his legacy.
The curator conceived the exhibition to explore the guiding questions, in relation to Ovid, of “What do writing and image have in common? How to restore the meaning and importance of the poet’s words through works of art?”
Instead of exploring Ovid’s poetic creations through the literature, this exhibition takes a different perspective. It looks at them through art.
But what’s so special about this exhibition is not that an exhibition on Ovid through art hasn’t been done before (the recent “Ovid 2000” trail at the Ashmolean guides you through art pieces; you’ll be hard fetched to find any exhibition on Ovid that doesn’t include some sort of visual material). What stands out are three things: the sheer epic scale, the diversity, and the time-range of the 250+ often world-famous artworks exhibited; the countless aspects of Ovid and his myths that are explored; and the approach of analysing Ovid’s influence not just through contemporary art, but particularly through later art and interpretations. This combination marvellously captures just how influential Ovid has been to artists through the eras.
Finally, of course, it is a worthy and long-awaited tribute to Ovid by Rome, the heart which breathed life into his ideas, after she exiled him 2000 years ago.
In this light, the final guiding question explores Ovid’s monumentality and immortality: “ When can a work be considered eternal and immortal?”
In this way, it sort of does justice to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. By moving from literature to art, this whole exhibition is still another Metamorphosis, another In nova…corpora, another offspring of Ovid. Perhaps another Ovid.
As you walk up the famous(ly) shallow steps where the Pope use to ride up on his carriage and horses, the first thing you encounter, expecting a Baroque entrance that the Popes once had, is a warmly neon-lit, circular open-roofed room within a wider white-washed chamber. It almost stops you in your step.
Around the walls are neon-light quotations of Ovid in Latin and English by Joseph Kosuth. The actual compositions draws on the ancient practice of carmina figurata — words that as a whole form a certain shape — through the arrangement between and within each phrase. But the translations capture how modern Ovid is — as the sign says, they are not exact dry word-by-word translations. Instead, they have been interpreted in the English with modern idioms and expressions, to capture what Ovid means to us today. Talk about how hip and modern Ovid’s words are today!
The first room explores Ovid and his immortality through codices. The circular chamber has rare manuscripts of Ovid, ranging from the oldest extant illustrated manuscript of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, dating from late 11th century from Bari, to the first printed edition of Ovid in 1471 Bologna. Then, among other incunabula, there’s the famously prestigious edition by Aldo Manunzio from 1502, with its dolphin and anchor emblem. Generations of priests took the time to write them down — even the racier bits. But the oldest illuminated manuscript has a fantastical detail: on the page describing Argos and Io, the scribe has drawn Io as a heifer and Argos with his 100 eyes, as Ovid writes.
Carefully embracing the books, the layout is also cleverly done. The circular structure seems to resemble an open-air tholos, and with the books arranged inside, looks like an ancient museum and even the Library of Alexandria, as described by ancient authors. But the quotation from Ovid circling the frieze to the heavens above clearly heralds it is as a shrine to Ovid; and its basking in the neon lights today shows that we still carry his torch on.
This link with the ancient library is enhanced by typical “portrait of a famous author”. Here, it is Ovid, yet interpreted in a later light when ancient manuscripts were being discovered again during the Renaissance. Depicting the ancient writer with his ink, pen and book as a turbaned Eastern scholar (Classical poets were seen as mystical wise men in the early 16th century), Giovan Battista Benvenuti clarifies it is Ovid from the myth depicted in the background: the metamorphosis of the Lycian peasants into Frogs after they refuse to give Leto and her newborns Apollo and Diana water (Metamorphoses 6.313–81).
What is interesting is that this myth choses to look at the end of Ovid’s life. Ovid’s Lycian Frogs myth is heavily laden with the theme of exile: Leto is banished from her land by Juno, the Lycian peasants are exiled from their human form. This is confirmed by the image on the left side, which depicts a scene of departure in a ship from a port, which the sign attributes to Ovid’s exile to Tomis after leaving Brindisi.
But Ovid’s continuous inspiration throughout the eras is perhaps best seen in the small details: Leto is quaintly portrayed as the Virgin Mary, and Apollo and Leto as two baby Christs; Ovid, who today is the quintessential Roman poet, in 1505 seen as a distant Eastern prophet.
The next room gets right down to Ovid the master of love (praeceptor amoris) by exploring his myths of beauty, seduction, and eroticism in contemporary Roman art. As the sign says, Ovid the “scientist” of love is unique in exploring love in all its forms. And the incredibly loaded layout enhances it too. Individually, each image captures a different aspect of Ovid’s mastery of love. The Pompeian frescoes of Venus combing her hair in front of a mirror plays into Ovid’s description of hairstyles in Ars Amatoria 3.133–168. The famous fresco of Polyphemos passionately kissing Galatea, a rare image about love actually depicting the carnal embrace, captures Ovid at his most erotic and plays into the theme of kissing he develops throughout Ars Book 1. Then there’s Ovid the teacher of tricks on how to appear irresistible, a theme best portrayed in the delicate 100 golden flies, attributed with beauty but also the practical apotropaic function of repelling the flies, that once decorated a woman’s dress.
But taken together, however, is where it gets exciting: mischievous Cupid seems to be gazing intently at the arched self-conscious mother and shooting his arrow at her “bountiful buttocks” — the result of the union is a baby Venus unlacing her sandal (left) and Venus from Pompeii (right). Behind them, this all takes place is the lush fresco of an idyllic garden from Pompeii. As a whole, it captures just how mischievous Ovid himself was, and how he crafted and chiselled away at the core of the myths and breaks their boundaries to create new versions. And this constant reinterpretation also goes the other way too. This scene relating to Ovid seems to recall an amazing scene from Book 3 of the Argonautica, where Aphrodite recounts to Hera and Athena how her uncouth son once made her fall in love. But it also recalls Ovid’s opposite interpretation, where Cupid accidentally pokes the tip of his arrow into Venus’ side when they embrace, causing her to fall irrevocably in love with Adonis (Metamorphoses 825ff).
With the next room comes the great contrast, and which demonstrates just how clever the layout of the exhibition is. Skirt only by a partial dividing wall is Rome’s other master of love: Augustus, the emperor ruling Rome during Ovid’s time and who kept a domineering hand on poets’ output. The contrast is direct and nuanced — now, we have another Venus and Cupid group, but this time it is Venus “Genetrix” (as Antonia Minor), Venus the Progenitor of the Julians and Romans, and therefore the symbol of honourable motherly care and fertility, holding a childlike and obedient son Cupid. Quite opposite to the lascivious familial fancies. Venus is now fully dressed in a queenly fashion, crowned with a tiara, in a dignified and restrained Classical pose. Ovid and Augustus may have invoked the same gods, but they did so in opposite ways — and by placing art relating to Ovid’s interpretation of love first, it highlights starkly just how much Ovid reimagined and countered Augustus’ official views.
This clash is best caught in a bust of Julia. Among a row of busts of serious looking Julio-Claudians, the bust of Julia immediately stands out, with its carefree hedonistic expression, head slightly tilted back. This stark contrast to the surrounding moralising monoliths of Livia as Venus Genetrix and Augustus as pontifex maximus, captures the clash between Augustus and Ovid most finely. It was likely Julia who introduced Ovid into the depraved adulteries of the high class, and it was Ovid’s participation in these that got him exiled by Augustus. And apart from this error, it was also Ovid’s carmen, probably the Ars Amatoria or Amores, whose myths and loves were explored in the previous room, that made Augustus exile him for undermining his moral reforms from the 20s BCE.
The next room expands on this clash between Augustus and Ovid through the conceptualisation of Venus through the ages. Is Venus Augustus’ matron or Ovid’s courtesan? This room shows Ovid victory in legacy: Venus is the latter. In the first half of the room, there is a stunning mirror image of the Capitoline “Venus Pudica” facing the “Venus Pudica” by Botticelli, composed some 1400 years later. Again — they look straight at each other, gazing at how remarably similar they are after so long. The same person, they are guided by the quotation above: “A gift from the gods: Beauty”.
Ironically, they both represent the “Chaste” or “Shy” Venus, a version that Augustus himself would have approved in concept. Yet both are anything but that —Venus’ fingers “modestly” covering her nipples and genitalia almost seem more to be coyly alluring the viewer’s attention towards them, and so fails to cover the fact that both are fully nude. In their temporal contrast, they are so similar — in fact, Botticelli take direct inspiration from this statue. Over almost a millenium and a half, it is Ovid’s reappropriation of Augustus’ chaste Venus that lasts.
In the other half of the room this conception of Venus is born into the flesh with the myth of Hephaestus discovering Venus and Mars’ adultery. A small Hellenistic terracotta from Alexandria is the first and one of the rare figurative artefacts that displays the myth (before the 2nd century CE). The artist draws particular attention to the famously fine chains by making them noticeably large (they must have been pretty engrossed not to notice these ones).
On the other hand, Giovanni Battista Carlone 1600s “Marte e Venere sorpresi da Vulcano” does just the opposite — almost imperceptibly thin are the delicately fine nets which Hephaestus holds up, revealing his amazing trick as much as he is revealing their adultery. However, here we also get the gods’ reaction — but instead of laughing and turning it into a comic scene (Metamorphoses 4.169–189; Ars Amatoria 2.561–588), they look shocked and ashamed— a moralising stance that echoes more of Augustus. Nevertheless, it is Ovid’s version which captures the carnality of Venus and her unchaste nature, that endlessly captivated later artists’ imaginations.
The rest of the exhibition takes up the myths and themes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and explores them through different media across the eras: manuscripts, original frescoes and statues, later Mediaeval, Renaissance and Baroque paintings, and much more. This second approach, looking at the art of Ovid’s countless myths, is a phantasmagorical treat: the sheer volume of eye-pleasing art, and the differing points of views over the ages, brings out so many of the aspects in Ovid’s account. The first half focuses on Ovid’s appropriation of Augustus’ myths through the arena of the gods.
For example, there is a section on Niobe and her children, killed by Apollo’s and Diana’s shafts after Niobe brags that the Thebans should worship her more than Leto because she is more prosperous with 14 children opposed to Leto’s two (Metamorphoses 6.200ff). A fresco from Pompeii follows Ovid’s details so much that it almost seems to be directly influenced by his account: the Niobids are on horseback, and only in Ovid’s Metamorphoses are they described on horseback. Some are already slipping off their horses after they have been struck (Met. 6.225–229).
Some are already dead, surrounded by a pool of their own blood (Met. 237–238). Some turning behind and raise their hands in prayer to Apollo to spare them (Met. 6.261–4).
Perhaps the best element in that room is again the layout, in how it helps us understand the real traumatic cruelty of Apollo and Diana’s killing all her children. As you enter, there is a beautifully flowing marble statue of a Niobid running away. It looks beautiful — the flowing and flying drapery over her body, the movement beautifies the suffering. Perhaps the current lack of flailing arms and head takes away from us seeing the horrific suffering. This contemporary image, as we have it today, largely turns a horrific slaughter into just another beautiful Hellenistic woman running. She almost seems to be winning — the style is very reminiscent of the Samothrace Victory.
Yet you can really understand the trauma behind Ovid’s poetically masterful description of the event … by looking behind this Niobid. Camassei’s painting stands as a surprising, sober, halting reality that captures the utter cruelty and pity: the utter terror in the incredibly young girl’s darkened eyes as she clings to her mother’s waist captures the pity like these ancient sculptures (as we have them today) just cannot. Niobe’s frown is indescribably powerful, her limp right arm supplicating Apollo and Diana (who has the arrow all too ready) seems to be hopeless, her left hand desperately shielding her daughter’s head and bringing her closer. In many ways, it brings out so many more moral elements from Ovid’s account.
This isn’t a beautiful phantasmagorical scene. This room captures just what a merciless, violent and traumatic slaughterhouse it really is. It’s not glorifying death — it rips open the gods’ cruelty.
Many artistic representations of Europa and the bull bring out the beauty of the scene. An ancient pot shows the rape of Europa in the traditional manner — Europa peacefully seated on the bull, surrounded by the identifying Scylla and Triton. Though today it might be difficult to decipher the emotional register in these images some 2200 years old, it doesn’t seem to want to convey Europa’s emotions intentionally. Likewise, Tintoretto’s painting of the “Rape of Europa” seems to be influenced directly from Ovid’s description when Europa feels so safe that she places herself on the bull’s back (Met. 2.860). The vivid use of colour seems to beautiful the scene and take away from the rape (though the slightly concerned look on Europa’s face seems quite important; yet the sign makes no mention of this, neither of the prominent man/woman on the left with the wreath).
But is it really a beautiful scene? Is Europa really feeling? How many layers are covering the fact that this is a rape? And yet, even though some artistic representations fail to capture the horror and unwillingness of Europa, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in his forward thinking poetry, already captures a lot of the unease and horror of Zeus’ actions, giving Europa a voice by describing it from her point of view. Placed opposite Tintoretto’s painting is Antonio Carraci’s “Rape of Europa” is inspired by Ovid’s account through the vivid emphasis of Europa’s terrified gaze backwards towards her mourning friends (Metamorphoses 2.870ff). But it also captures the fear and mourning in Europa’s friends, which arguably is the main emphasis of the painting.
This is another aspect the exhibition brought out really well — yes, they’re all scenes involving men “taking” women; sure, the images are beautiful and glorified. But the deliberate contrast between images really brings out the unacceptable aspect that they are rapes, and nothing less — something that Ovid in his sensitivity often touches upon; he often hints at the inappropriate male belief that they are free to do anything — in Europa’s myth he gradually traces her uneasiness as she is taken away, though he gives her no voice.
In the same vein, Leda and Swan is a similar myth. In the Metamorphoses, the immediate text implies no rape: Leda is simply lying by the stream beneath the swan’s wings (Met. 6.112). Yet the context is more telling: Arachne is weaving a tapestry depicting the immoral wrongs of the gods, and all the women in that section have one thing in common: they are raped by a god. As the sign says, there were two traditional Hellenistic (and later) depictions of Leda and the Swan — both implying she enjoyed it: the swan directly having intercourse with her as she reclines, and the other showing Leda smiling and embracing the swan as a “knowing and consenting lover”.
This is what Leonardo da Vinci depicts in his gorgeous “Leda and the Swan” (1510–1520). However, he moralises it to an extent: Leda is smiling at the product of her mating, Castor and Pollux, and the disastrous result of the copulation, Helen and Clytemnestra, as still unborn in an egg.
But is this really a scene where the victim would smile? How many layers are hiding the fact that this is anything but a consentual pleasing scene — it’s a rape, nothing less. Perhaps not all the paintings in this exhibit highlight this aspect, as the , yet precisely by their silence they highlight how different and foreward looking Ovid is — giving women a voice and pointing out the immorality in rape.
There are many other beautiful artwork of Ovid’s myths relating both the gods and men being unfaithful to women: Io, Proserpina, Ariadne. And yet again, the exhibition goes beyond this male appropriation of women by exploring the fluidity of love — the outer minority, the more “risqué” myths involving love between the same gender, love between humans and animals, male and female love gone wrong. Other times, it’s the gods who suffer. Jusepe de Ribera’s painting of “Venus discovering the body of Adonis”, focusing solely on Venus’ lamentation of Adonis while sidelining the narrative by including only one dog, highlights that even though Adonis is merely a pawn in the whimsical scruples of the gods, zooms in on Venus’ real human suffering.
Then there’s male and female love gone wrong with the creation of Hermaphroditus, when the female nymph Salmacis falls passionately in love with the male Hermaphroditus that she presses herself against him so hard in a pool that they become one — both male and female. Ovid focalises on Hermaphroditus’ anger at being metamorphosed in this way. The painting emphasises this by showing the male, Hermaphorditus, the victim of rape by the female Salmacis — gender roles are reversed. As he carefully and yet vulnerably enters the water naked, it is Salmacis who raises her hand to look at him, who is the one in power. Yet at the same time, the beauty of the landscape at dawn sheds a light of natural beauty on the whole scene, and seems to beg the question: is the act, and the resulting sharing, really that revulsive? Is the resulting beauty is really that unnatural? It seems to explore the duality between what is ugly and acceptable, what is beautiful.
Then there’s homosexual rape — with the paradigm of Ganymede and Zeus. It explores so many aspects too. Sure, the beautiful Hellenistic sculpture highlights the beauty and naturalness between this partnership.
But yet again, it is another full-out rape. Ovid stresses that even though Zeus gives Ganymedes’ father compensation with horses, the father is still distraught — nothing can compensate the loss and rape of his son. Just so, facing this beautiful Hellenistic sculpture of their mutual love, the sore reality of this suffering is brought out in Saraceni’s “Rape of Ganymede” (1605–1608). Although Ovid does make Orpheus recount Ganymede’s rape in the context of Jupiter’s “gentler” stories (Met. 10.152f), he leaves out the pain by his father. Saraceni, instead, captures the unbearable loss to Ganymede’s father, as he raises both hands up towards his disappearing son, and has to have a shepherd hold him up.
Finally, this exhibition ends by duly honouring Ovid with a proper honour. The last painting in the last room highlights the amazing diversity and lasting modernity behind Ovid’s creations. Nicholas Poussin’s The Triumph of Ovid (1625). The laureated Ovid, reclining as the greatest Latin poet and victoriously raising two myrtle branches (the symbols of Venus), is surrounded by little amorous Cupids which represent his themes. To the right, there is a spectacular scene where one Cupid squeezes a stream of milk from a sleeping Venus’ breast, while another Cupid whets his sword with that milk on Mar’s shield. To the left, two other Cupids try to shoot a red heart hanging from a tree. Another tries to catch fire, the flames of love; another is riding a wild animal; yet another plays ball with a celestial planet (a reference to the Fasti?). Another tries to catch a floating globe.
Ending the exhibition, it is a perfect tribute to Ovid — ensnaring so many of his themes with countless famous artpieces on a level never done before, it succeeds so well by making the viewer reflect on so many different and new aspects within Ovid’s works. The many school groups and politicians alike visiting when I was there shows how Ovid’s success continues today and is the success of the exhibition.
Vivam. “I shall live”, or “I shall have life”. Thus Ovid ended his Metamorphoses.
Well, it’s definitely proving true 2,000 years later.
And yet, it’s not just “Ovid”. It’s the infinite inventions and reinventions that Ovid facilitated.
At the end, there is time for a new beginning.
Time for some new in nova… corpora.
The exhibition runs until the 20th January (but as often happens in the sometimes great and sometimes annoying unstable world of Roman museum politics, the exhibition may be extended if it is successful). If you have a chance to visit the museum in the next week, do go — it is a great exhibition which does full justice and further to Ovid’s enduring and inexhaustible presence.
For more information, you can find the official description on the Scuderie Del Quirinale’s main page:
Another great essay on the exhibition can be found on Medium by a Fellow of the Paideia institute, Luby Kiriakidi: https://medium.com/in-medias-res/rome-celebrates-her-ovid-2ae6241d7081
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