Feast of the Gods (art)
The Feast of the Gods or Banquet of the Gods as a subject in art showing a group of deities at table has a long history going back into
Often the occasion shown was specifically either the wedding of Cupid and Psyche or that of Peleus and Thetis, but other works show other occasions, especially the Feast of Bacchus, or a generalized feast. While the wedding of Cupid and Psyche is just the happy ending of Psyche's story, the wedding of Peleus and Thetis is part of the grand narrative of Greek mythology. The feast was interrupted by Eris, goddess of discord, who threw the golden Apple of Discord inscribed "for the most beautiful" into the company, provoking the argument that led to the Judgement of Paris, and ultimately to the Trojan War. Eris is sometimes shown in the air with the apple, or the apple with the diners, and sometimes the feast forms a background scene to a painting of the Judgement, or vice versa.[2] This wedding was also used as a political symbol around the time of the marriage of the Dutch leader William the Silent to Charlotte of Bourbon in 1575.[3]
Generally, despite Thetis being a sea-nymph, depictions of her wedding have the same inland setting as other scenes. A depiction by Hans Rottenhammer (1600, Hermitage Museum) probably of the wedding of Neptune and Amphitrite is set in a beach-side pavilion, with the sea full of an unruly crowd of marine mythological creatures. The Feast of Achelous is derived from Ovid in his Metamorphoses, who describes how Theseus is entertained by the river god in a damp grotto, while waiting for the river's raging flood to subside: "He entered the dark building, made of spongy pumice, and rough tuff. The floor was moist with soft moss, and the ceiling banded with freshwater mussel and oyster shells."[4] The subject was painted a number of times, with Rubens producing an early version with Jan Brueghel the Elder,[5] and a later picture attributed to his "school", and Hendrick van Balen collaborating with Jan Brueghel the Younger. All show much smaller and more decorously behaved groups than the wedding parties.
Italian Renaissance
One of the earliest depictions is a cassone panel by Bartolomeo di Giovanni from the 1490s (Louvre, illustrated); this is paired with a panel of the Procession of Thetis, another common way of depicting a wedding; artists were unsure what form an actual Olympian wedding ceremony might have taken. A more sophisticated but similar depiction of a rustic picnic eaten on the ground, is The Feast of the Gods by Giovanni Bellini (1514), later changed by Titian (to 1529), a large and important painting; both show the story of Priapus and Lotis.[6]
Two major
Around the mid-century Taddeo Zuccari did the Wedding of Bacchus and Ariadne in fresco in the Villa Giulia, Rome,[7] and in northern Europe Francesco Primaticcio painted that of Peleus and Thetis in a mythological series in the ballroom of the Palace of Fontainebleau.[8] Frans Floris painted a monumental feast in oil (c. 1550, Antwerp),[9] nearly two metres across, as well as a Feast of the Seagods (1561, Stockholm).
-
Palazzo Te, Mantua, Cupid and Psyche
-
Frans Floris, c. 1550, no specific occasion
Northern Mannerism
The revival of interest in the subject some decades later in
Over the next thirty years or so a number of Netherlandish artists painted the subject, usually in small
Over the same period these same painters, later followed by Rubens, produced many depictions of
Context
Both the weddings of Cupid and Psyche and that of Peleus and Thetis were common subjects in antiquity, going back to Greek
The earlier paintings may owe something to entertainments alla antica such as those of the Compagnia della Cassuola ("Company of the Shovel") mentioned by Vasari, where a social confraternity in Florence including artists such as Giovanni Francesco Rustici and Andrea del Sarto held elaborate dinners which might include the attendees dressing as classical gods and re-enacting episodes from mythology.[14] Raphael and Giulio's frescos decorated spaces used for lavish entertaining that might bear comparison with Olympian hospitality; the previous century Marsilio Ficino had written a thank-you letter to Lorenzo de' Medici that made just that comparison.[6]
The later paintings can also be seen in the context of the wider interest in "company scenes" of social occasions in Netherlandish art at the start of the 17th century, expressed in the new genre subject of the merry company, and its "gallant" and "elegant" variations,[15] as well as the continuation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's scenes of peasant life by his son Jan and others. The feasts formed a division of the class of small-scale mythological paintings, in which the interest of the figures is very often shared with landscape or still life elements.[16] Both of these figure in many feasts, but the emphasis is on a generous range of nude figures, displaying a variety of complicated poses that display the artist's virtuosity.[17]
Small groups of non-divine revellers in similar
Later works
The
Notes
- ^ Bull, 342–343; Woolett, 60
- ^ Bull, 343
- ^ Bull, 343, citing P. Grootkerk's PhD, 1975
- ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses VIII, 547ff
- ^ Woollett, 60-63
- ^ a b c Bull, 342
- ^ Vlieghe, 105
- ^ Drawing of Apple of Discord Thrown by Eris at the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis: Study for Fresco in the Hall of Henri II at Fountainebleau, Francesco Primaticcio, Metropolitan Museum of Art
- ^ Woolett, 60
- ^ The engraving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; at the British Museum, in sections; Bull, 342–343
- ^ Bull, 342–343; Slive, 13–14; Vlieghe, 105–106
- ^ Bull, 218–219
- ^ Santos, especially p. 21 onwards
- ^ Freedman, 33
- ^ Liedke, 13–15
- ^ Vlieghe, 105–106, and passim for the rest of chapter 6
- ^ Woollett, 60
- ISBN 0198604769, 9780198604761, google books
References
- Bull, Malcolm, The Mirror of the Gods, How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods, Oxford UP, 2005, ISBN 0141912626, google books
- Freedman, Luba, Classical Myths in Italian Renaissance Painting, 2011, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 1107001196 google books
- Liedtke, Walter A., "Frans Hals: Style and Substance", Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011, ISBN 1588394247 google books
- ISBN 0300074514
- Santos, R. de Mambro, "The Beer of Bacchus. Visual Strategies and Moral Values in Hendrick Goltzius' Representations of Sine Cerere et Libero Friget Venus", in Emblemi in Olanda e Italia tra XVI e XVII secolo, ed. E. Canone and L. Spruit, 2012, Olschki Editore, Florence, web text on academia.edu
- Vlieghe, H. (1998), Flemish art and architecture, 1585–1700, Yale University Press Pelican history of art. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300070381
- Woolett, Anne T., van Suchtelen, Ariane, eds, Rubens & Brueghel: A Working Friendship, 2006, Getty Publications, ISBN 0892368489 google books