Ovid: “Love, Myths and Other stories” – IX
Myths in Naples NAM – Ariadne in Naxos
The painting is one of the many replicas depicting Ariadne abandoned on Naxos from the Vesuvian area. The girl is depicted inside a cave on the beach, weeping and half-reclining. Behind her there is a winged figure, identified as Nemesis, who points out Theseus' ship as it recedes, and on the left, a weeping cupid. In Pompeian paintings and ceramic decorations, the depictions of the theme of Ariadne abandoned by Theseus can be divided into two series.
The first series of depictions, already widespread in the 5th century BC, features Theseus moving away from an unaware and sleeping Ariadne. Among the Pompeian works painted according to this scheme and preserved at the NAM of Naples, see the painting inv. no. 9052. These paintings are attributable to contexts of the III and IV Style.
The second series is linked to an exclusively Roman environment, and is represented by about twenty examples dating from the second half of the 1st century AD. According to this model Ariadne is depicted awakening and observing the sea, where Theseus' ship is indicated by Nemesis. Another example of the same pictorial series exhibited at the NAM, is the fresco inv. no. 9051.
For this series of paintings it is plausible to hypothesize a transposition into painting of the literary episode described by Ovid in his Heroids:
...
inde ego - nam ventis quoque sum crudelibus usa -
vidi praecipiti carbasa tenta Noto,
ut vidi haut dignam quae me vidisse putarein,
frigidior glacie semianimisque fui.
From there - for I found the winds cruel, too - I beheld your sails stretched full by the headlong southern gale. As I looked on a sight methought I had not deserved to see, I grew colder than ice, and life
half left my body.
(Heroids X, 31-34).
The pain turns her to stone in a vain gaze stretched out over the sea:
...
aut mare prospiciens in saxo frigida sedi,
quamque lapis sedes, tam lapis ipsa fui.
(Heroids X, 49-50).
I have sat all chilled upon the rock, as much a stone myself as was the stone I sat upon.
Fresco From Pompeii
AD 60 - 79 (4th style)
Naples, “Museo Archeologico Nazionale”, Inv. no. 9047
Exhibition: “Ovidio: Loves, Myths & Other Stories” - Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome
Ovid: “Love, Myths and Other stories” – IX
Myths in Naples NAM – Ariadne in Naxos
The painting is one of the many replicas depicting Ariadne abandoned on Naxos from the Vesuvian area. The girl is depicted inside a cave on the beach, weeping and half-reclining. Behind her there is a winged figure, identified as Nemesis, who points out Theseus' ship as it recedes, and on the left, a weeping cupid. In Pompeian paintings and ceramic decorations, the depictions of the theme of Ariadne abandoned by Theseus can be divided into two series.
The first series of depictions, already widespread in the 5th century BC, features Theseus moving away from an unaware and sleeping Ariadne. Among the Pompeian works painted according to this scheme and preserved at the NAM of Naples, see the painting inv. no. 9052. These paintings are attributable to contexts of the III and IV Style.
The second series is linked to an exclusively Roman environment, and is represented by about twenty examples dating from the second half of the 1st century AD. According to this model Ariadne is depicted awakening and observing the sea, where Theseus' ship is indicated by Nemesis. Another example of the same pictorial series exhibited at the NAM, is the fresco inv. no. 9051.
For this series of paintings it is plausible to hypothesize a transposition into painting of the literary episode described by Ovid in his Heroids:
...
inde ego - nam ventis quoque sum crudelibus usa -
vidi praecipiti carbasa tenta Noto,
ut vidi haut dignam quae me vidisse putarein,
frigidior glacie semianimisque fui.
From there - for I found the winds cruel, too - I beheld your sails stretched full by the headlong southern gale. As I looked on a sight methought I had not deserved to see, I grew colder than ice, and life
half left my body.
(Heroids X, 31-34).
The pain turns her to stone in a vain gaze stretched out over the sea:
...
aut mare prospiciens in saxo frigida sedi,
quamque lapis sedes, tam lapis ipsa fui.
(Heroids X, 49-50).
I have sat all chilled upon the rock, as much a stone myself as was the stone I sat upon.
Fresco From Pompeii
AD 60 - 79 (4th style)
Naples, “Museo Archeologico Nazionale”, Inv. no. 9047
Exhibition: “Ovidio: Loves, Myths & Other Stories” - Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome