The Ovid Room; Correggio's mythological cycle based on Ovid's Metamorphoses
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Philippe's son Louis, religious and somewhat neurotic, attacked with a knife one of the most famous works, Correggio's Leda and the Swan, now in Berlin, and ordered the painter Charles-Antoine Coypel to cut up all three of the great Correggio mythological works in the presence of his chaplain, which Coypel did, but saving and repairing the pieces. The Leda went to Frederick the Great of Prussia, the Danäe to Venice, where it was stolen and eventually sold to the English consul at Leghorn, and Jupiter and Io went to the Imperial collection in Vienna."--Sholem Stein |
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In the late 1520s and early 1530s Italian Renaissance painter Antonio da Correggio (1489 – 1534) conceived a now-famous set of paintings depicting the Loves of Jupiter as described in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The voluptuous series was commissioned by Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua, probably to decorate his private Ovid Room in the Palazzo del Te; however, they were gifted to Emperor Charles V, and subsequently the cycle was dispersed outside Italy.
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The cycle
The cycle includes Jupiter and Io (c. 1530), its companion piece Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle (1531-32), now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Leda and the Swan (1532), now in Gemäldegalerie of Berlin, Danaë (1531-1532), now in Rome's Borghese Gallery, and Venus and Cupid with a Satyr (c. 1528), now at the Musée du Louvre of Paris.
Subsequent fate
In the hands of the Swedes
Offered as a gift to Charles V they were in his collection. At the Sack of Prague, the paintings were looted by the Swedes, and taken to Stockholm, by order of Gustavus Adolphus. On his death, being neglected, they were discovered in the reign of Christina, degraded to the purpose of window-shutters in a stable, by Sébastien Bourdon, a French painter, whom she patronized. They were repaired by her order, conveyed to Rome, and after her decease, came into the possession of Don Livio Odescalchi, Duke of Bracciano.
The Orleans collection
The heirs of Don Livio Odescalchi sold the paintings to Philippe II, Duke of Orléans whose son Louis, religious and somewhat neurotic, attacked with a knife one of the most famous works, Correggio's Leda and the Swan, now in Berlin, and ordered the painter Charles-Antoine Coypel to cut up all three of the great Correggio mythological works in the presence of his chaplain, which Coypel did, but saving and repairing the pieces. The Leda went to Frederick the Great of Prussia, the Danäe to Venice, where it was stolen and eventually sold to the English consul at Leghorn, and Jupiter and Io went to the Imperial collection in Vienna.
In the Sketches of the lives of Correggio, and Parmegiano by William Coxe we read of the art vandalism by Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans:
- "by the order of his son, who was shocked at the nudity of the figures, the pictures were cut in pieces. A similar fate, according to Mengs, happened to the Jupiter and Io, ascribed also to Correggio, which was in the same collection, and probably obtained in the same manner from the heirs of the Duke of Bracciano; for the Duke of Orleans himself cut out the head, and burnt it. Coypel, a French painter, afterwards collected the remnants of the piece which were not destroyed, and to which a new head was added by another artist; and the picture sold to the King of Prussia for a great price, and placed in the Gallery of Sans Souci. A Danae, supposed to be painted by Correggio, was preserved in the Orleans collection, as acquired from the heirs of Christina. It was purchased by Mr. Hope, and is now said to be at Paris."
See also
