11 Paintings, Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religions

Baldassare Franceschini, AKA Volterrano, 1611 - 1689 Florence
BACCHUS AND PUTTI
OIL ON CANVAS
144 x 231 cm; 56 5/8 by 100 in

Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in Greek mythology. Alcohol, especially wine, played an important role in Greek culture with Dionysus being an important reason for this life style. His name shows that he may have been worshipped as early as c. 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner; in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a major, popular figure of Greek mythology and religion, and is included in some lists of the twelve Olympians. Dionysus was the last god to be accepted into Mt. Olympus. He was the youngest and the only one to have a mortal mother. 

Also known as Bacchus, the name adopted by the Romans and the frenzy he induces, bakkheia. His wand is sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey. It is a beneficent wand but also a weapon, and can be used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. More

A putto (plural putti) is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually nude and sometimes winged. Putti are commonly confused with, yet are completely unrelated to, cherubim. In the plural, "the Cherubim" refers to the biblical angels, which have four faces of different species and several pairs of wings; they are traditionally the second order of angels. Putti are secular and represent a non-religious passion. However, in the Baroque period of art, the putto came to represent the omnipresence of God. More

Baldassare Franceschini (1611 – 6 January 1689) was an Italian late Baroque painter active mainly around Florence. He was named, from Volterra the place of his birth, and was the son of a sculptor in alabaster.

At an early age, he worked as an assistant to his father, and then studied with the Volterran artist Cosimo Daddi. This employment did not make full use of his talents, so the Marquese Inghirami placed him, at the age of sixteen, under the Florentine painter Matteo Rosselli. Both Francesco Furini and Lorenzo Lippi also trained with Rosselli. Within a year, he had advanced sufficiently to execute frescoes in Volterra with skilled foreshortening, followed by work for the Medici family in the Villa Petraia.

In 1652, the Marchese Filippo Niccolini, planning to employ Franceschini on the frescoes for the cupola and back-wall of his chapel in Santa Croce, Florence, dispatched him to various parts of Italy to improve his style. The painter, in a tour that lasted some months, took a serious interest in the schools of Parma and Bologna, and, to some extent, in the Romano-Tuscan style of Pietro da Cortona.

Franceschini died of apoplexy at Volterra on 6 January 1689. More

Attributed to Alessandro Gherardini, FLORENCE 1655 - 1723 LIVORNO
JUPITER AND ANTIOPE
oil on canvas
59 by 76 in.; 149.9 by 193 cm.

Jupiter and Antiope . The painting comes out of the story of the seduction of Antiope by the god Zeus in Greek mythology, later imported into Roman mythology and told of the god Jupiter. According to this myth, Antiope, the beautiful daughter of King Nycteus of Thebes, was surprised and seduced by Zeus in the form of a satyr. She became pregnant and bore the twins Amphion and Zethus, who later killed Nycteus' brother Lycus in revenge for his treatment of Antiope and took over the city of Thebes. More

Alessandro Gherardini (16 November 1655 – 1726) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Florence. He was the pupil of the painter Alessandro Rosi. Among his pupils was Sebastiano Galeotti. In Florence, he painted a Crucifixion for the Monastery of the Augustines adjacent to Santa Maria dei Candeli; and frescoes from the Life of St. Anthony for the Convent of San Marco. More

Jan Miel, BEVEREN-WAES NEAR ANTWERP 1599 - 1664 TURIN
CERES, BACCHUS AND VENUS ('SINE CERERE ET BACCHO FRIGET VENUS')
signed and dated lower right: J: de Miel / peint. / 1645
oil on canvas
56 1/8  by 64 1/8  in; 142.5 cm by 162.7 cm

Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus, Latin for Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes, or Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus, is a quotation from the Roman comedian Terence (c. 195/185 – c. 159 BC) that became a proverb in the Early Modern period. Its simplest level of meaning is that love needs food and wine to thrive. It was sometimes shown in art, especially in the period 1550–1630, in Northern Mannerism in Prague and the Low Countries, as well as by Rubens. More

The painting illustrates the popular adage that without food (Ceres, the Roman god of agriculture) and wine (Bacchus), love (Venus) is left cold. Venus's need for the assistance of food and drink for invigoration.

Jan Miel (1599 in Beveren-Waas – 1663 in Turin) was a Flemish painter and engraver who was active in Italy. He initially formed part of the circle of Dutch and Flemish genre painters in Rome who are referred to as the 'Bamboccianti'. He later developed away from the Bamboccianti style and painted history subjects in a classicising style. More

Alessandro Turchi, called l'Orbetto, VERONA 1578 - 1649 ROME
BELLONA WITH ROMULUS AND REMUS
oil on canvas
77 by 57 in.; 195.6 by 144.8 cm

Bellona was an Ancient Roman goddess of war. Her main attribute is the military helmet worn on her head; she often holds a sword, spear or shield, and brandishes a torch or whip as she rides into battle in a four-horse chariot. Her iconography was further extended by painters and sculptors following the Renaissance. She is also the mother of Romulus and Remus, The legendary founders of Rome. More

Once Romulus and Remus, the twins were born, a she-wolf found and suckled them, and a woodpecker fed them. A shepherd and his wife found them and fostered them to manhood as simple shepherds.

Alessandro Turchi (1578 – 22 January 1649) was an Italian painter of the early Baroque, born and active mainly in Verona, and moving late in life to Rome. He also went by the name Alessandro Veronese or the nickname L'Orbetto. More

Jacopo Ligozzi, VERONA 1547 - 1627 FLORENCE
THE ABDUCTION OF THE SABINE WOMEN
oil on canvas
52 1/8  by 73 3/8  in.; 132.3 by 186.4 cm

The Rape of the Sabine Women is an episode in the legendary history of Rome, traditionally dated to 750 BC, in which the first generation of Roman men acquired wives for themselves from the neighboring Sabine families. The English word rape is a conventional translation of the Latin raptio, which in this context means "abduction" rather than its prevalent modern meaning in English language of sexual violation. The story provided a subject for Renaissance and post-Renaissance works of art that combined a suitably inspiring example of the hardihood and courage of ancient Romans with the opportunity to depict multiple figures, including heroically semi-nude figures, in intensely passionate struggle. More

Jacopo Ligozzi (1547–1627) was an Italian painter, illustrator, designer, and miniaturist. His art can be categorized as late-Renaissance and Mannerist styles. Born in Verona, he was the son of the artist Giovanni Ermano Ligozzi, and part of a large family of painters and artisans. After a time in the Habsburg court in Vienna, where he displayed drawings of animal and botanical specimens, he was invited to come to Florence and became one of the court artists for the Medici.

In 1574 he became head of the Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno, the officially patronized guild of artists, which was often called to advise on diverse projects. He served Francesco I, Ferdinando I, Cosimo II and Ferdinando II, Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Late in life, he was named director of the grand-ducal Galleria dei Lavori, a workshop providing designs for artworks made mainly for export: embroidered textiles and for the newly popular medium of pietre dure, mosaics of semiprecious stones and colored marbles. He died in Florence. More

Attributed to Pierre-Michel Bourdon, Paris 1778 - 1841 Paris
Abduction of the Sabine, c. 1829
Watercolor on paper 
12.7 x 23 cm; 5 by 9 in

BOURDON, Pierre Michel (1778 - 1841), was a French Painter of Religious and mythological subjects. A pupil of Regnault, Pierre Bourdon exhibited Heloise and Abelard at the 1806 Salon, gaining a second-class medal. For many years he was assistant lecturer at the Louis the Great school of drawing. Bourdon also painted Christ on the Cross, kept at Pau Cathedral. More

This watercolor is a copy after  The Rape of the Sabines , famous composition painted by Jacques-Louis David in 1799 and kept in Louvre museum.

GENOA, 1ST HALF OF THE 17TH CENTURY 
Perseus and Andromeda
Tempera on parchment. 
21.7 x 16.9 cm.

In Greek mythology, Andromeda is the daughter of the Aethiopian king Cepheus and his wife Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia's hubris leads her to boast that Andromeda is more beautiful than the Nereids, Poseidon sends a sea monster, Cetus, to ravage Aethiopia as divine punishment. Andromeda is stripped and chained naked to a rock as a sacrifice to sate the monster, but is saved from death by Perseus. More

TRÜBNER, WILHELM, (Heidelberg 1851 - 1917 Karlsruhe) Satyr and centaurs
Oil on panel. 
36.3 x 28.2 cm

Satyr and centaurs are nomadic, herd creatures that prefer to live in forests. They have the body of a horse or a goat, their bodies then becoming human where a normal animal neck would be. 

Wilhelm Trübner (February 3, 1851 – December 21, 1917) was a German realist painter of the circle of Wilhelm Leibl. He was born in Heidelberg and had early training as a goldsmith. In 1867 he met classicist painter Anselm Feuerbach who encouraged him to study painting, and he began studies in Karlsruhe under Fedor Dietz. The next year saw him studying at the Kunstacademie in Munich, where he was to be greatly impressed by an international exhibition of paintings by Leibl and Gustave Courbet. Courbet visited Munich in 1869, not only exhibiting his work but demonstrating his alla prima method of working quickly from nature in public performances. This had an immediate impact on many of the city's young artists, who found Courbet's approach an invigorating alternative to the shopworn academic tradition.

The early 1870s were a period of discovery for Trübner. He travelled to Italy, Holland and Belgium, and in Paris encountered the art of Manet, whose influence can be seen in the spontaneous yet restrained style of Trübner's portraits and landscapes. During this period he also made the acquaintance of Carl Schuch, Albert Lang and Hans Thoma, German painters who, like Trübner, greatly admired the unsentimental realism of Wilhelm Leibl. This group of artists came to be known as the "Leibl circle".

He published writings on art theory in 1892 and 1898, which express above all the idea that "beauty must lie in the painting itself, not in the subject". By urging the viewer to discover beauty in a painting's formal values, its colors, proportions, and surface, Trübner advanced a philosophy of "art for art's sake". In 1901 he joined the recently formed Berlin Secession, at the time Germany's most important forum for the exhibition of avant-garde art. From 1903 until his death in 1917 he was a professor at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe, also serving as director from 1904 to 1910. More

FRANCK, PAUWELS called PAOLO FIAMMINGO, (Antwerp c. 1540 - 1596 Venice) 
Assembly of the Gods: The Loves of the Gods. c. 1585. 
Oil on canvas. 
119.6 x 166.7 cm

In the ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, the Twelve Olympians are the major deities of the Greek pantheon, commonly considered to be Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes and either Hestia, or Dionysus.[1] Hades and Persephone were sometimes included as part of the twelve Olympians (primarily due to the influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries), although in general Hades was excluded, because he resided permanently in the underworld and never visited Olympus. More

Pauwels Franck known in Italy as Paolo Fiammingo and Paolo dei Franceschi (c. 1540 - 1596), was a Flemish painter, mainly of landscapes with mythological and religious scenes, who was active in Venice for most of his life.

He was likely born c. 1540 but his birthplace is not known. He became a member of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1561. He is recorded in Venice from 1573 but was likely an assistant in Tintoretto’s workshop there already in the 1560s. He worked in Venice for the rest of his career.[1] He opened a successful studio in Venice, which received commissions from all over Europe. More

Ecole Romaine du XVIIIe siècle
LA SYBILLE DE TIBUR
ROMAN SCHOOL, 18TH CENTURY ; THE TIBURTINE SYBIL; OIL ON CANVAS
Huile sur toile
97 x 73 cm ; 38 1/8 by 28 3/4 in

The sibyls were women that the ancient Greeks believed were oracles. The earliest sibyls, according to legend, prophesied at holy sites. Their prophecies were influenced by divine inspiration from a deity; originally at Delphi and Pessinos, the deities were chthonic deities. In later antiquity, various writers attested to the existence of sibyls in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor. More

The Tiburtine Sibyl, or Albunea, was a Roman sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Etruscan town of Tibur (modern Tivoli).

The mythic meeting of Cæsar Augustus with the Sibyl, of whom he inquired whether he should be worshiped as a god, was a favored motif of Christian artists. Whether the sibyl in question was the Etruscan Sibyl of Tibur or the Greek Sibyl of Cumæ is not always clear. The Christian author Lactantius identified the sibyl in question as the Tiburtine sibyl. He gave a circumstantial account of the pagan sibyls that is useful mostly as a guide to their identifications, as seen by 4th century Christians. More

Alice Lenkiewicz

The Judgement of Paris, 2013

39 Old Masters Artist Embedded with Helen of Troy, with Footnotes

Alice Lenkiewicz, (British (b. 1964) - lives in Liverpool, Merseyside, UK) was born in 1964 in Tavistock, Devon and brought up in Plymouth. Her parents are the Plymouth artist, Robert Lenkiewicz and her mother is Celia. Alice has always been creative and painted and written from an early age. She has exhibited in the UK and internationally, and has work in a growing number of public and private collections.

Alice's love of beautiful objects, historical artifacts and pattern combined with her interest in fairy tales and the more reflective nature of otherworldly deities has led her to cover a range of themes that touch on a number of genres and issues. 

Alice completed her degree in Fine Art and English at Edge Hill University in 1998, obtaining a 1st class honours degree, continuing on to a Masters in 'Writing Studies', During this time she edited, published and wrote poetry and short fiction. More

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