Numerous studies have examined the rich and varied afterlife of Ovid's Metamorphoses in art and literature of the early modern period. As its title indicates, this volume (the 70th instalment in the remarkably prolific Intersections series) takes as its focus the theme of ‘reinvention’ – an apposite emphasis, given the significant place occupied by inventio in the rhetorical and artistic theory of the centuries under consideration. In their introduction the editors highlight the contributors’ concern not only with ‘elements in the artistic and literary reception of the Metamorphoses that differ from Ovid's narrative’ (p. 4), but also with ‘details or elements that can only be understood by an attentive reading of Ovid's text, in combination with knowledge of other writings from classical Antiquity’ (ibid.).
The first of five sections concentrates on printed cycles of illustrations of Ovid's text and its early modern adaptations, and on the commentary tradition. Two of the editors of the Ikonographisches Repertorium zu den Metamorphosen des Ovid (2014), G. Huber-Rebenich and S. Lütkemeyer, identify departures from and additions to the Ovidian text with reference to ‘a selection of motifs from illustration series which were formative within the tradition’ (pp. 11–12), with a particular focus on pictorial cycles by Bernard Salomon, Antonio Tempesta and Chrispijn van de Passe, and the engravings in Isaac de Benserade's Métamorphoses d'Ovide en rondeaux (1676). As the authors observe, ‘illustrations of Ovid's Metamorphoses fluctuate between deviation from and fidelity to the original’ (p. 32). De Benserade's rondeaux are also the subject of the chapter by B. Hryszko, who notes that the French poet's transformation of the classical epic ‘results from refined and erudite play with Ovid's mythology’ (p. 77), incorporating supplementary material on the divine amours depicted – but not elaborated upon in the text – on Arachne's tapestry in Book 6 of the Metamorphoses. Hryszko concludes that ‘Benserade, using licentia poetica, believed that he was called upon to demonstrate inventiveness, change, variation, fun, play, satire, and often freely changed the content of the myths’ (p. 93). Between these two essays comes R. Seidel's analysis of different tendencies in commentaries on Ovid's poem, as exemplified by the treatment of the Phaethon episode (Met. 1–2) in the works of Petrus Berchorius, Raphael Regius (with additions by Jacobus Micyllus) and Georgius Sabinus (on these commentators see also pp. 383–5). Contrasting Berchorius’ heavily allegorical Ovidius moralizatus with the approaches adopted by sixteenth-century commentators, Seidel demonstrates how ‘[t]he humanists stood in the tradition of the medieval allegorical understanding of the text and yet, with varying degrees of consistency, set themselves apart from it’ (p. 71).
The longest section of the book is devoted to reinventions of the Metamorphoses in paintings and prints. De Jong, complementing his earlier study in H.-J. Horn and H. Walter's Die Rezeption der Metamorphosen des Ovid in der Neuzeit (1995), examines representations of Mars, Venus and Vulcan (Met. 4) in sixteenth-century Italian art, asking ‘how do the various painted and printed illustrations of the myth allude to each other?’ (p. 114). His wide-ranging survey (which considers prints by Enea Vico, Gian Giacomo Caraglio, Léon Davent, Giovanni Battista Scultori, Giulio Bonasone, Matthias Greuter and Hieronymus Cock, and paintings by Johann Rottenhammer, Paris Bordone, Palma Giovane, Lambert Sustris, Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese) demonstrates compellingly how artists ‘combined the details of various texts into one picture, making the (illustration of) one text “comment on” and enhance (the illustration of) the other text, and vice versa’ (p. 150). It is difficult to do justice here to Enenkel's massive contribution (comfortably over 100 pages) on pictorial translations of the Salmacis and Hermaphroditus episode (Met. 4) between around 1500 and 1800; but a catalogue of artists and media discussed may give some idea of its range. In these pages the reader will encounter paintings by Jan Gossaert, Carlo Saraceni, Jacob Pynas (engraved copy by Magdalena van de Passe), Louis Finson, Annibale Carracci, Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Jean-François de Troy, Scarsellino, Francesco Albani and his workshop, Bartholomäus Spranger, Ludovico Carracci, Daniel Vertangen, Samuel van Hoogstraten and Louis Jean-François Lagrenée; emblems from Barthélemy Aneau's Picta poesis and Nicolaus Reusner's Aureola emblemata; engravings by Pieter van der Borcht, Charles Monnet and Jean Massard, Gerard Vidal, Giacomo Franco, Moses van Uyttenbroeck, Pierre Brebiette and Cornelis Bloemaert the Younger, François Poilly, Johann Wilhelm Baur, Chrispijn van de Passe, Antonio Tempesta, and Hendrik Goltzius and Robert de Baudous; drawings by Godfried Maes, Baldassare Peruzzi and Paolo Farinati; and woodcuts by Bernard Salomon and Virgil Solis. On the mass of evidence provided, it is impossible to disagree with Enenkel's assertion that ‘the creative power of invention that the early modern artists displayed in their appropriations of Ovid's story was considerable’ (p. 155).
Two more narrowly focused essays round off the section. L. Drees-Drylie explores Poussin's use of contemporary translations of Metamorphoses and Fasti (by Giovanni Andrea dall'Anguillara and Vincenzo Cartari respectively) in his Realm of Flora, now in Dresden; her chapter reveals how the artist develops ‘a unique way of combining mythological personae that strikingly deviates from traditional representations’ (p. 279) and ‘finds surprising and new visual solutions to common themes, reinventing Ovid's famous concepts’ (p. 294). D. Fulco considers the inventive treatment of Ovid's accounts of the fall of Phaethon and the Gigantomachy (Met. 2) in early eighteenth-century commissions for German and Austrian palaces, with reference to Hans Georg Asam's Phaethon frescoes in Schloss Schönach near Mötzing in Bavaria (modelled on Baur's engravings and those of Johann Ulrich Kraus) and Johann Michael Rottmayr's illusionistic fresco of The Fall of the Giants in Vienna (possibly drawing on designs by Goltzius, Sandrart and Diepenbeeck). The aim of both decorative schemes is ‘to allegorize political power relations and glorify their patrons’ roles in averting disaster, reestablishing order and reconsolidating authority’ (p. 325).
Part 3 moves on to the applied arts. N. Andrews examines the silver and coral figures of Daphne (Met. 1) by Wenzel Jamnitzer and his son Abraham, analysed as both a vehicle for opulent display and ‘a purposeful intervention or reading, one that tugs upon a thematic thread running through Ovid from Daphne to Medusa and from laurel to coral’ (p. 337). The analogy between the Metamorphoses and the princely Wunderkammer (pp. 349–50) is nicely drawn. M.J. Macey presents the magnificent early sixteenth-century tapestry of Narcissus at the Fountain (see Met. 3) in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, arguing persuasively that ‘the lavish clothing, lush garden, ornate fountain, and solemn reflection featured in the tapestry are both decorative and didactic’ (p. 356; see also p. 372).
The penultimate section condenses the ubiquitous presence of Ovid's tales of transformation in early modern literature into two examples. D. Dornhofer and S. Scholz focus on the figure of Actaeon (Met. 3) in Spenser's ‘Mutabilitie Cantos’ (a fragment of the seventh book of The Faerie Queene). Here Spenser ‘parodies Actaeon in a way that can be seen as paradigmatic for his project of re-writing classical narratives with a Protestant agenda’ (p. 377), through his story of Faunus’ spying on Cynthia. In addition to the authors’ demonstration of how ‘Spenser's treatment of the Actaeon myth highlights its deviation from the source and thereby invites application to contemporary political issues in Ireland signposted by his transformation of the Ovidian setting’ (p. 393), the chapter contains much interesting material on Arthur Golding's translation of the Metamorphoses. A welcome extension of the geographical and cultural scope of the volume is provided by A. Lozano-Vásquez and P. Zalamea, who trace Ovidian elements in Juan de Espinosa Medrano's Quechuan play The Rape of Proserpina and Endymion's Dream. A detailed reading of this auto sacramental reveals ‘the creative ways in which the Ovidian narrative … was absorbed and transformed in the academic circles of mid 17th century Viceregal Peru’ (p. 401). Espinosa Medrano's appropriation of the classical fable of Proserpina (Met. 5, Fasti 4) is here read as ‘an allegory, specifically of the history of the salvation of humanity through the mystery of Grace and the establishment of the Eucharist’ (p. 415).
Finally, two chapters investigate Ovid's contribution to early modern theoretical reflections on art and literature. K.M. Pahl's exploration of John Dryden's engagement with the Ovidian figures of Narcissus and Pygmalion (Met. 3 and 10) in his theoretical writings on translation argues that ‘the Metamorphoses and its translations … provided a theoretical platform, a vehicle for reflection on what transformation and morphing meant on an abstract, theoretical, and methodological level’ (pp. 424–5). C. Cieri Via considers the use of Ovid's account of Perseus (Met. 4–5) as a metaphor for the Renaissance ‘paragone’ between different art forms, remarking that ‘[t]he relationship between painting and sculpture is … implicit in the myth of Perseus, one of the founding myths of sculpture’ (p. 456). The ramifications of this for early modern artistic theory are worked out with particular reference to Annibale Carracci's frescoes of Perseus liberating Andromeda and Perseus and the petrification of Phineus for the Galleria Farnese in Rome. Cieri Via's final quotation from Giovan Pietro Bellori offers a neat closural gesture.
The volume is sumptuously produced, with many colour illustrations; it is a pity, but perhaps inevitable, that this raises the price to a level that ensures that this impressive collection of essays is likely to be consulted principally in libraries. Sporadic slips in typography and English idiom are unlikely to have a serious impact on the reader's ability to follow any of the arguments advanced. The following corrections to Latin quotations and titles are offered in a spirit of helpfulness rather than of detraction: for ‘contiunatio’ read ‘continuatio’ (p. 64 n. 36); for ‘Metamorposhes’ read ‘Metamorphoses’ (p. 77); for ‘gurgire’ read ‘gurgite’, and for ‘ilia’ read ‘illa’ (p. 124); for ‘Salamcidis’ read ‘Salmacidis’ (p. 236); for ‘Ett’ read ‘Et’, and indent elegiac couplets (p. 285); for ‘fureas’ read ‘furens’ (p. 323); add ‘specillo ante’ before ‘oculos fixo’ (p. 339), and for ‘cautusquam’ read ‘cautusque’ (p. 340; also xx); for ‘circonscribenda’ read ‘conscribenda’ (p. 445 n. 6); for ‘aemutatur’ read ‘aemulatur’ (p. 447 n. 13).
