A Brief Bibliographic Notes

Barolsky, Paul

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A Brief Bibliographic Notes

Paul Barolsky

Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Botticelli to Picasso

A Brief Bibliographic Note

Author

Paul Barolsky

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00090.010

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-16286

A Brief Bibliographic Notes

As my title (especially “from Botticelli to Picasso”) suggests, this book is related to my broader A Brief History of the Artist from God to Picasso (University Park, Pa., 2010). Like the earlier book, the present work focuses on the modern period in the Western tradition of the history of art. Like the earlier book, the present work has everything to do with artistic self-consciousness. Like Ovid himself, Ovidian artists are exquisitely self-reflexive.

My principal goal has been to look at works inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or the tradition in which he wrote, in relation to the poet’s implicit theory of art. According to Ovid all art is metamorphosis. The central text in this book is therefore Ovid’s poem. Although I am especially partial to the translations of Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington, 1954) and Charles Martin (New York, 2004) there is also much to like in various other translations, including those of Allen Mandelbaum, A. D. Melville, David Raeburn, and David Slavett, among others.

Joseph B. Solodow’s The World of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Chapel Hill, 1988) has quickened my sense of Ovid’s self-conscious artifice. One can also learn a great deal about Ovid, art, and literature from Leonardo Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphoses and the Pursuit of Paganism (New Haven and London, 1986).

Readers can introduce themselves further to the study of art history in relation to Ovid by turning to a variety of recent instructive books: Victor Stoichita, The Pygmalion Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock (Chicago, 2008); Svetlana Alpers, The Vexations of Art: Velázquez and Others (New Haven and London, 2005); Lisa Florman, Myth and Metamorphosis: Picasso’s Classical Prints of the 1930s (Cambridge, Mass., 2002). These works will lead the interested reader toward other useful books and essays on Ovid and art scattered throughout the art-historical literature. Particularly refreshing is the handsome, nicely illustrated volume that accompanied the recent exhibition at the National Gallery, London of works by Titian inspired by Ovid. It includes both an excellent introductory essay by Nicholas Penny and a number of poems that were inspired by Titian’s Ovidian pictures; see Metamorphoses: Poems Inspired by Titian (London, 2012). For the older literature on Titian and Ovid, see Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic (New York, 1969).

My book departs from much scholarly work not only in its tone, but also in its attention to description as interpretation. I aspire, however imperfectly, to the ideal of “lightness” or leggerezza that Italo Calvino admires in Ovid; see his Six Memos for the Next Millennium (Cambridge, Mass., 1988). I have also absorbed a great deal from Kenneth Clark: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (Princeton, 1956). Although his book is dated in some respects, it is an enduring work notable for its urbanity and elegance.

The present meditation is dedicated to the ideal of serio ludere, the serious play that abounds in Ovid and the artists whom he influenced. Despite the fact that so much has been written about mythological art, I believe that the art historical scholarship, even at this late date, has not yet fully captured the playful tone of Ovid. Despite its notable virtues, art history (I think it fair to say) is not known for its playfulness. For an excellent introduction to serio ludere and a useful commentary on Ovid, see Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New Haven, 1958). Inevitably, all discussions of playfulness in art and literature lead us back to the classic study of Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston, 1950). In its attention to playfulness, especially of mythological art, the present book complements my first book, Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art (Columbia, Mo., 1978) written under the spell of Huizinga. A great deal of the humor or wit of Renaissance art has taproots in Ovid.

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