1066NOTZeus_Pigalle

Sanssouci Park Foundation
Ovid Met, 1.567ff.

Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, "Jupiter and Io", garden sculpture group in marble, Great Fountain Garden in Sans-Souci Park, Potsdam, Germany, ca. 1750.

The sculpture ought to be considered in panorama. Pigalle, whose other sculptures are sometimes found in museums now but poorly represented in OGCMA, is responsible for the Olympians around the Great Fountain.

Frederick the Great supervised the construction of a landscape garden into the terraced vineyard and beyond to the South of his pleasurable retreat. Conceived on the scale of Versailles and emulating the notion of a Baroque landscape in the French mode, the Great Fountain places the human visitors in the company of the Olympians.

This sculpture group is placed at the head of the circuit around the Great Fountain. Pigalle's "Juno", which is a more standard treatment than this remarkable pair, is placed opposite. In fact, Jupiter might be looking at Juno's possible approach. Io's attached fondness for the Olympian is quite unbovine.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University and other contexts.
This resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.