0876PerseusAndromeda_Titian

0876PerseusAndromeda_Titian

Wallace Collection
Ovid Met.4.663-752

Titian (Vecellio Tiziano), "The Liberation of Andromeda" (after 1559) Wallace Collection, London

See ML 553 figure & caption.

Titian "achieves a phantasmagoric effect by following a text [i.e. Ovid's] ad literam." (Panofsky Problems 168) Panofksy notes "three or four features for which, so far as [he knows], there is no precedent in the representational tradition of the Andromeda myth": branches of coral on the shore, Perseus plunging "heels over head", he is brandishing a curved harpe-like sword. The absence of Pegasus is not technically a reinvention of the Ovidian text ascribable to Titian. It is, though, a feature important to Ovid and, thus, to Titian, too. [pennis ligat ille resumptis / parte ab utraque pedes]

Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the sea monster, a classical oil painting with a dramatic, dark aesthetic

Titian seems bent on restoring the "true" Ovidian details to a myth that had been infiltrated by Pegasus.

Titian’s iconography is classicizing and “corrective”. The hero descends from the sky by virtue of his winged sandals (and NOT Pegasus). He wields a curved sword, the harpe (and NOT a scimitar).

The artist is correcting Medieval corruptions of the narrative whereby Perseus had come to ride Pegasus. As is typically the case, Titian plays faithfully with the Ovidian text, Metamorphoses 4.640ff.

By contrast, one might consider Ingres’ (1810) “Angelica saved by Ruggiero” which depicts Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso canto 10. Ariosto’s sense of humor comes through upon consideration of the hippogryph especially.

Cf. Mignard's Andromeda

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, 1400 – 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.