0877PerseusAndromeda_Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens, “Andromeda,” ca. 1638, Gemäldegallerie, Berlin, cat. no. 778C

Fullsize female nude standing fully frontal, with miniature Perseus arriving on Pegasus from the left frame. A cupid seems to be communicating Andromeda’s pending release in a gesture that relieves the viewer’s eye from the intimacy of Andromeda’s nearly complete exposure.

Rubens rarely shies from overexposure of his female subjects. But this picture seems to flirt with the extreme. This would seem to anticipate by two centuries the impulse that effected, say, Vanderlyn’s Ariadne.

Ovid, Met. 6.640 ff. : http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D4%3Acard%3D604

wikimedia commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Andromeda_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

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.