The Aldobrandini Misfortunates:

The Mythological Women of the Aldobrandini Room

Room of the Aldobrandini Wedding, Room X on the west passage from the old Vatican Library to the Profane Museum (normally encountered by visitors after exiting the Sistine Chapel and the Rooms of the Addresses

In this same room are the famous 1^st-century frescoes with landscapes and scenes from the Odyssey and also the Augustan Age Aldobrandini Wedding fresco.

While the Aldobrandini Wedding is properly named after the ownership by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini of the fresco, my extension of the name to the “Misfits” is merely a working title.

a series of female mythological portraits in fresco

“the wall paintings found in an acient villa at Tor Marancia, which Helbig calls a “Gallery of Mythical Fair Women,” prominent for their crimes and misfortunes in love.’ He considers them copies of good originals of stereotyped subjects of Alexandrian art. Douglas Sladen, The Secrets of the Vatican (London 1907), 338, on GoogleBooks

Sladen mentions only Pasiphae, Scylla, Canace, Myrrha, Phaedra. He says nothing about the unnamed one.

Canace: a daughter of Aeolus who bore a son to her brother Macareus. “Aeolus threw the child to the dogs and sent a sword to his daughter, ordering her to kill herself.” Grimal — Not Ovid Met. Not Apollodorus. But Ovid Her. 11 “Canace to Macareus”

Myrrha: a daughter of Cinyras, also called Smyrna; famous as mother of Adonis but notorious for her unnatural lust for her father. Ovid Met. 10; not Her.

Pasiphae: daughter of Helios and wife of Minos whose unnatural attraction to the bull sent by Poseidon led ultimately to conception and birth of the Minotaur. — mentioned only incidentally in Ovid Met.

Scylla: Ovid Met. 8.1-150 tells of Scylla, daughter of Nisus of Megara; she betrayed her city by cutting Nisus’s purple lock in a treasonous pact with King Minos. She was metamorphosed into the egret. Another (?) Scylla was once a fair girl beloved of Glaucus who scorned Circe for her; but Circe used witchcraft in her revenge and altered Scylla into the horror that Odysseus knew. (cf. Ovid Met. 13.730 – 49)

Fedra (Phaedra): the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae who married Theseus and became Hippolytos’ stepmother. Though Hippolytos was Theseus’ son by his Amazon wife, Phaedra’s attraction to Hippolytos was regarded as incestuous by him and ultimately fatal for her.

Unnamed

Links in Bridgeman Art Library:

Phaedra: http://www.bridgemanart.com/asset/242792/Roman/Phaedra-27-BC-14-AD-fresco-bw-photo?lang=de

All the photos are in OGCMA/images already:

Canace: not in OGCMA, but would be on p. 0285, thus OGCMA0285ANCIENTCanace_Aldobrandini.jpg

Myrrha: OGCMA0691ANCIENTMyrrha_Aldobrandini.jpg

Scylla: 0666ANCIENTMinos_Aldobrandini.jpg

Pasiphae: 0842ANCIENTPasiphae_Aldobrandini.jpg

Phaedra: 0883ANCIENTPhaedra_Aldobrandini.jpg

Perhaps check in LIMC for model and background on how these have been treated.