Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) Circle of
Andromeda and the Sea Monster
from an engraving by Agostino Carracci (1557-1602)
Oil on canvas (75 x 59 cm. - Framed 96 x 77 cm.)
Complete details of the painting (click HERE)
The subject of the painting, derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses, is inspired by the myth of the princess Andromeda, daughter of the Ethiopian king Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia, who is tied to a rock and about to be attacked by a sea monster sent by Poseidon at the request of the Nereids.
The heroine's misfortune was to have a mother who praised her own beauty as superior even to that of the Nereids, the sea nymphs daughters of the sea god. According to mythology, the young woman was therefore chained to a cliff, and offered as a sacrifice to the terrible monster sent to placate the wrath of the nymphs, offended by Cassiopeia's unforgivable pride.
This myth was very popular in Roman Baroque painting, often commissioned as a subject to decorate the sumptuous private rooms of aristocratic palaces in the Urbe: despite her Ethiopian origins, Andromeda is immortalized with fair skin, a detail that was meant, in this way, to wink at the tastes of the patrons of the time, who would certainly not have appreciated a dark-skinned figure as a beauty to admire.
Considering the frame of reference, the canvas appears to have been created to offer the viewer an image of a female nude in an extremely sensual, almost erotic pose, as an object of pleasure for aristocratic patrons of the 16th and 17th centuries, who greatly enjoyed possessing such compositions and displaying them in their collections.
The work, which is to be attributed to the hand of an artist active in Rome in the 17th century, draws direct inspiration from an engraving by Agostino Carracci, dating from around 1590 (fig. 1, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_U-2-154).
The beautiful maiden is depicted according to an iconography particularly dear to artists of the period, with a pose that evokes classical goddesses, completely nude and chained to a rock and, just as described in Ovid's words, of great sensuality.
'As soon as he saw her (Perseus, her liberator) bound with her arms to the hard rock, if it hadn't been for a light wind that moved her hair and the warm tears that flowed from her eyes, he would have believed her a marble statue... without knowing it, he took fire and remained astonished and captivated by the image of beauty he saw...' (Metamorphoses IV, vv. 672-683).
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
The work is sold complete with a gilded wooden frame and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and a descriptive iconographic sheet.
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