PolyphemusANCIENT

Loves of Jupiter told in individual vignettes within a Roman narrative floor mosaic originally installed in the Roman provincial villa of Italica (near Seville), then spoliated (removed) and since 1901 installed as a center-piece mosaic in the impluvium/courtyard ("Patio Central") in remodelling of the 15th/16th-century Palacio de la Condesa de Lebrija, in Seville, Andalucia, Spain.

In the complex narrative mosaic Polyphemus (piping for Galatea) occupies the central roundel and four Seasons fill the corners; the intermediate spaces are filled with meandering foliage and florets, but most notable are the eight narrative vignettes of Jupiter's sexual engagements — with Danaë, Callisto, as a river god (the Nile?), Ganymede, Io, Europa, Antiope, and Leda. (Click on those items for linked images.)

The Contesa de Lebrija, Donna Regla Manjón y Mergelina, fancied herself an antiquarian scholar and wrote a guidebook about the spectacular mosaic she had plundered from the nearby site. While in the archaeological site of Italica itself many remarkable mosaics are preserved in situ amid the plundered walls that once surrounded them, the Contesa's removal of this mosaic decontextualizes but (arguably) recontextualizes its original purpose.