Eos2.0001_Marolles

Eos2.0001_Marolles

Michele de Marolles, "Aurora and Tithonus", plate for Tableaux du Temple des Muses (Paris 1655).

Aurora (Eos in Greek) is the

If Ovid links himself as an artist with Arachne (Martindale 308) is Rubens emulating here Ovid's own narrative prowess? In the Metamorphoses the poet embeds stories within stories, as here the painter also does.

As in Velazquez' Arachne picture, the complex pictoral narrative tells stories in three levels: 1) the rape of Europa (the inset tapestry), 2) Minerva's judgment of Arachne (in the foreground), and 3) the weaving of the narrative tapestry on the loom (in the left background).

See also now Javier Portús, Metapintura: un viaje a la idea del arte en España (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado), 190-96 (within the essay "Arte Infinito: Aracne Faciebat".

The whole episode is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which served Rubens, Velázquez and their models so effectively as a "painter's bible." Rubens certainly knew Ovid's version. This may be the most abiding lesson learned from this remarkable painting: painters since Titian had been eager to establish themselves as master narrators par excellence, the very role Ovid had established for himself over centuries. Velazquez in this picture engages Ovidian narrative complexity and shows himself the supreme narrative master.

The inset Rape of Europa is a cunning replica of Titian's "Rape of Europa" which was painted about one century earlier, a key holding in the Spanish royal collection for which Velázquez himself was curator. Velázquez and his associate Peter Paul Rubens seem to have communicated — perhaps concerning the production of art itself — by exchanging versions of the Arachne story and Europa's role in it.

This painting is an excellent example demonstrating how a painter can convey a message by "speaking" the language of mythological allusion.