AcontiusCydippe2.0003

Anonymous Italian illustrator (1533), "Cydippe Acontio" (Cydippe to Acontius), woodcut illustration for a text of P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroides, Venice: Mira diligentia Ioannes Maria Palamides, 1533. Imaged as part of the Warburg Institute's illustration of Renaissance-Baroque rare books.

In this triptych, Cydippe is shown among four young women worshipping before a statue depicting, perhaps, Adam and Eve; then in the central panel, a solitary young woman contemplates an orb that seems to bear an inscription; finally, the same young woman (apparently) engages a text in a scriptorium, presumably composing the text "preserved" by Ovid in the 21st Herois (Ov. Her. 21).

Acontius binds unwitting Cydippe to marriage by writing on an apple (or orange) the words "I will marry no man but Acontius." When Cydippe reads the oath, she is bound.

A tale originating with Callimachus, it was of interest to Ovid (the most Callimachean of the Roman poets?). Dryden is not the first, but perhaps the most influential English poet to treat the tale.

The image at right is derived from the Warburg Institute Library's contribution on JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.12272284