Roger’s Comments (group member since Aug 29, 2018)

Roger’s comments from the Ovid's Metamorphoses and Further Metamorphoses group.

Thank you for the various reactions to my comments, Kalliope. You have indeed been busy. A few brief replies:

• Velázquez. You say the Apollo is the funny one. Yes, that's exactly what I meant. He seems rather namby-pamby, doesn't he, an outsider that the others would normally chuck out to let them get on with their work. Take him away, and the picture is indeed a rather strong genre scene, and quite realistic.

• Tintoretto. I had seen the drawing, but didn't post it because I could not fully make it out. Indeed, I can't really see enough from any of the reproductions to see for myself what is shown in that mirror. Which is why I'm glad to know of the Arasse book and to read your review and Fionnuala's (which informs me that it is in fact now available over here). So thanks for that.

• Titian. Yes, I chose the Prado one simply because I too liked it's handling the best. I saw the Vienna version a couple of years ago in a traveling exhibition in Houston, of all places, and melted in front of it. But at the same time, it did not seem quite what I remembered. Until looking for an illustration to post here, I didn't realize just how many versions there are.

• Gossaert. Your mention that his Danaë is dangerously close to an Annuciation suddenly explained the feeling of deja vu I had when I saw it. Isn't there indeed an Annunciation, by him or someone like him, that uses an almost identical composition?* Or was this very painting once actually called an Annunciation? But the similarity is understandable: a mortal woman impregnated at a distance by the supreme god to conceive a god-man; all that differs is the belief system! R.

*I can't find one, so perhaps it is just me conflating the subjects in my memory.

Kalliope wrote: "The passage describing the pleasure Salmacis is enjoying when she is bathing, before she spots Hermaphroditus, struck me as a perfect theme for paintings - another excuse for pure voyerism and the ..."

Totally right. There are a number of nude sculptures called Salmacis, but even the one you show is pretty generic—that is, pretty but without much to make it individual. An excuse, as you say.

The Hoogstraaten, though, is new to me. I seem to recall a few others that show Hermaphroditus as "already looking somewhat soft," as you put it. But why? Salmacis is attracted to him as a man, and clearly expects the Full Monty. So for an artist to suggest that he is already androgynous, and Salmacis is just the fixative, so to speak, surely contradicts Ovid? R.

Kalliope wrote: "I don't understand your question, Roger. There is no Mars in the Velázquez. It is the scene when Apollo goes to Vulcan to tell him about his wife (and Mars)."

Nonetheless, you have explained it. I knew it wasn't Mars, but didn't realize it was a later episode in the same story, probably because I have trouble thinking of Apollo / Phoebus / Helios / Sol / Sun as one and the same person. Playing spy and tattletale is certainly a Sun-like thing to do—the Sun in literature is often seen as an early reconnaissance drone—but it does not seem at all Apollonian. I was also interested in the fact that what it a relatively rare setting (the forge of Vulcan) should have been used for two very different episodes in the story, with Vulcan the cuckold in each.

I see why you suggest that this Velázquez could be influenced by Tempesta. But why does he have so little of his strength of composition? The T is bursting with energy; V May be the greater artist, yet by comparison this picture seems mundane and flaccid. R.

What, if anything, fo you think, is the relationship between the Velázquez and the subject of Mars in the Forge of Vulcan that I posted at 4/104?

Nice to have your pictures again! R.

Kalliope wrote: "Hello everyone. I am back."

And welcome home! R.

Yes indeed, Elena; it was the NYT article that reminded me of it, although it is a work I have known for a long time.

No direct connection to Louis XIV, though that too is interesting. There is a film by Gérard Corbiau, Le Roi danse, all about this. You see him near the beginning (about three minutes into the clip below) making his grand entrance as Apollo; it is well worth watching. The eager young man with the curly hair is Jean-Baptiste Lully, who would become his court composer.

https://youtu.be/PdeqbpfXaK8

The full movie is also available. R.

Historygirl has asked me to post the URL for the Medusa Exhibition essay she was really referring to. It is not the online blog, as I thought, but an entire edition of the Met Bulletin, now available only in PDF. It is well worth looking at, for its numerous other illustrations (including that "trigger warning one"), which take the story all the way to the present day, and enough critical apparatus to satisfy the most academic among us. Thank you, Historygirl! R.

http://resources.metmuseum.org/resour...

Here is one more Perseus and Andromeda, created in Ovid's lifetime, no less. It is a wall painting from the Imperial villa at Boscotrecase, painted in the last decade of the 1st century, BCE, and now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. The full picture is unretouched, but I have punched up the contrast on the two details for clarity, I especially like the almost rococo elegance of the sea monster. I am not sure what the other figures in the picture are doing. R.


Roman (Boscotrecase): Perseus and Andromeda in a Landscape (late C1 BCE, NY Met)


— detail of the above


— detail of the above

P.S. Looking at these again, I am amazed at the technical sophistication of the artist. Not just that monster; look at the modeling of the rocks, or even the roundness of the figures. Is this usual for 10 BCE?

I have just stumbled upon a reading of Book IV in the Raeburn translation on YouTube. I don't know the reader, but I find him very dry and even abrasive, so I shan't be listening to more. But I assume the other books are available too. R.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05q9D...

I feared that the conversation on Book IV was dead. Thank you, HistoryGirl, for reviving it. I found the article you mean by following your directions, but the site has so much on it that navigation gets a bit confusing. So here is the direct link:

https://metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-th...

I found the progress of the Medusa image from Classical to Romantic times utterly fascinating, and would have liked to have taken it farther. But I could not find your Kate Moss photomontage at all. Trigger warning or not, can you tell me how to reach it? R.

SHE DID. SEE POST 206.

You are right about the Muses, Jim. The work was rather more complex originally, with the birth of Apollo shown by another dancer sitting on top of a flight of steps which, if I remember right, Apollo reascends at the end. But Balanchine, at some later time, simplified it so that it became truly a ballet blanc, without scenery, with the simplest costumes, the minimal number of characters, and very few props. Stravinsky also revised his score, though I think those changes were not radical. R.

Watching Balanchine's Apollo, I wondered if there might not be a ballet of the Daphne story. Nothing of much significance on YouTube, I'm afraid, but I was interested in this eleven-minute ballet score from 1936 by Leo Spies (1899–1965). I especially like the way it ends, which is of course the whole point of the Daphne story. R.

https://youtu.be/9b3LT_Pmjfc

APOLLO IN MUSIC. Neither of these works addresses any of Ovid's specific Apollo stories, but they do portray defining aspects of the god in especially clear terms, so I can convince myself they are not entirely off-topic.

The first is all about energy. Benjamin Britten (1913–76) wrote the short piece Young Apollo in 1939 for piano, string quartet, and string orchestra. It is not often heard now but, as one of the commenters on YouTube remarks, it makes you wish that all that energy of the time had been put into something other than war.

https://youtu.be/S3zYbW2II00

My second example, from the previous decade, is a masterpiece. It is the one work I would choose over all others to define neo-classicism, and thus express the Apollonian ideal. Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) wrote the score, using only strings, in an updated baroque style. It was choreographed by the young George Balanchine (1904–83) and premiered in 1928. Although without specific plot, it shows Apollo coming of age through interaction with the Muses (only three of the nine, but Kalliope is among them). At the end, he recognizes his divine parentage. There is one passage, near the end of the first video (which unfortunately is in two parts), which might be interpreted as the horses pulling the chariot of the Sun—or maybe that's just me. If you watch only one bit, make it the sublime apotheosis (10:30 in the second video).

https://youtu.be/BbK1rF23FD8
https://youtu.be/MG7xaHJU_Ts

And yet, as I watch again, I realize that this pristine purity is never found in Ovid. Though he writes of all the gods, he is much more a Dionysian writer than an Apollonian, isn't he? Though he might have enjoyed the Britten. R.

At post 1/193, I introduced Handel's cantata Apollo e Dafne, with links to a couple of rather odd productions. However, I know there are some here who get pleasure from just sampling an aria or two. So I offer the opening aria by Dafne herself, "Felicissima quest'alma" (most fortunate is this soul). How delectably Handel sets the pastoral mood by interweaving the solo oboe in with the voice!

https://youtu.be/jDEvUPHyeOA

Jim wrote: "So, I'm still trying to determine whether Ovid intended Medusa to be a tragic figure, one more victim of a godess' rage?"

Tragedy requires empathy, doesn't it? Ovid simply states the facts: Neptune ravished (vitiasse) Medusa in Minerva's temple; so that this might not go unpunished, Minerva turned Medusa's hair into snakes. It's the usual thing: blame the victim. But elsewhere, as in the story of Andromeda, Ovid at least remarks that the punished victim was innocent. Here he doesn't. R.

Jim wrote: "Laquerre's swaggering rendition of Medusa: a delightful discovery! ...

I think I post these things mainly for you, Jim (although this is coals to Newcastle, as it comes from Toronto!). Check out the full production; if you know French, it is quite easy to follow. I'm also glad you liked the Vivaldi—but then who wouldn't? I have listened to it four times (with two different singers) since posting it. R.

This is what Jim sent me to post. Neat! R.

Ilse, in a comment on quite a different part of Goodreads, mentions the Semele of Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), so I looked it up. It is a fairly short Singspiel (opera or operetta with spoken text) that shows Juno's temptation of Jupiter's mistress, and the resultant conflagration. As it was presented in Berlin in 1782, someone must have set the musical numbers—but I can find references only to a composer who should have set it but didn't, and another who took it on a century later. Both scores, it appears, have been forgotten. R.

Still a problem. If you send it direct to me, I'll post it. R.

Jim, the image did not come through. Please try again, though, as you've made me curious. R.