Parthenope1.0024

Parthenope1.0024_Meynier

JOCONDE database
Vergil Georgics 4.563
Pausan. 9.34.3

Charles Meynier, "Nymphs of Parthenope, Carrying the Penates, Conducted by the Goddess of the Fine Arts to the Banks of the Seine" (allegory of the arrival of the arts in France), ceiling painting, 1827, Salle G des Antiquités Égyptiennes, Louvre, Paris (inv. 6617).

The statuary offered by the nymphs' assistants represent Hercules — representative of Herculaneum's wealth — and Jupiter (for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies?).

Parthenope and the other sirens inhabited the dangerous reefs along the Bay of Naples in that landscape mytholgized by reality and legend. The story was that Parthenope died by suicide, throwing herself into the sea when her wiles failed to seduce Odysseus. The ancient settlement at what is Napoli (Naples) was called Parthenopeia and later renamed Neapolis, when the inhabitants moved to the protectable acropolis.

Meynier narrates here the French requisition of Neapolitan artworks, making the Italian side willing and demure and the French side Olympian.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.