Venetian School, 16th century, Andromeda freed by Perseus

Venetian school, 16th century

Andromeda freed by Perseus

Oil on canvas, 172 x 155

With frame 195 x 177 cm

And on that rock above the dry shore

I tied her naked to the monster, like

I said that he who came found it

It's a coincidence that the Gorgonee pens are up there.

Ovid, The Metamorphoses, IV

(translation by Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara)

Cassiopeia, queen of Ethiopia, once boasted of the beauty of her daughter Andromeda, which she said was superior to that of the sea Nereids. Offended by the insult, Amphitrite, the mother of the latter, convinced Poseidon to avenge the honor of her daughters: he thus commanded that Ceto, a sea monster, should rise from the depths of the sea and devastate the coasts of Ethiopia. The only solution to calm its fury was to sacrifice Andromeda. Chained to a rock, the princess was spotted by the hero Perseus, who by chance was flying over the area, hastily fleeing after having taken off the Medusa. With the severed head of the latter, the hero petrified the monster and was thus able to save the girl.

This painting depicts the moment after Andromeda's liberation: Perseus, still wearing the winged sandals used for flying, has now freed her from her chains and holds her tenderly, a new lover. Some marine divinities rush to celebrate the victory: a triton on the right is blowing a horn, while another personification, crowned with algae, helps to carry Andromeda to safety, sitting on the petrified monster. In the latter it is possible to recognize a further development of the myth: from the petrified blood of the monster, corals were born, joyfully welcomed by the marine community of tritons and nereids.

The painting reveals the immediate Venetian matrix, prevailing despite the cloth that sails on Andromeda, Ferrarese in the dense wrappings that fall from the young woman's shoulder. A warm chromatism winds over the bodies of the portrayed, illuminating and flooding with shadows on occasion the muscles in an ascending motion, at its apex in the triton with a horn. Compositional arrangement, twists and delicate movements refer to the proudly Venetian cultural season of Titian, as immediately recalled by a graft of Veronese (Perseus frees Andromeda, 1576-1578 Rennes, Musee des Beaux Arts).

In the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the lives of the four main artists of the time ended in the Venetian hinterland: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Bassano, whose pictorial parabola continued in the decades to come in the guise of more or less vaunted imitation. Following their lead, the famous pen of Marco Boschini (The Rich Mines of Venetian Painting) distinguished seven manners that could be derived from as many artists, who took inspiration from them. Among the seven, Jacopo Negretti, better known as Palma the Younger, reflected a material pragmatism similar to the present, concentrating mythological scenes in voluminously animated compositions. The same Andromeda Freed by Perseus (Museum Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel) opens an episodic sequence in which we can include, similar to the present, The Three Graces (Accademia di San Luca, Rome and private collection) and Loth and his Daughters (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). It is symptomatic that other artists such as Paolo Fiammingo (L'amor Letheo, Vienna, Kunstistorisches Museum), Felice Brusazorci (Loth and his Daughters, private collection) and Pietro Mera (The Fall of Man, Walters Art Museum Baltimore and Diana and the Nymphs Surprised by Actaeon, private collection) have assimilated the same creative modules of the present, in the context of the Venetian Panism of the late sixteenth century.

The subject is not new in the hinterland of the Serenissima: taking up the vision of Bonifacio de' Pitati (Perseus and Andromeda, Bergamo, Accademia Carrara), the artist of the present approaches the Titian lexicon of mid-century. If Andromeda Freed from Perseus by Titian (Wallace Collection, London), commissioned by Philip II of Spain, introduces the thin jewels worn by the princess, it is in Mars Stripping Venus (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland) and Venus and Mars United by Cupid (The Met, New York) by Veronese that it is possible to detect the same, docile closeness of the two lovers.