ROMAN SCHOOL, EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
The Giant Orion
Oil on canvas
50 5/8 by 39 1/2 in.; 128.6 by 100.3 cm.
In Greek literature he first appears as a great hunter in Homer's epic the Odyssey, where Odysseus sees his shade in the underworld. The bare bones of Orion's story are told by the Hellenistic and Roman collectors of myths, but there is no extant literary version of his adventures comparable, for example, to that of Jason in Apollonius of Rhodes'.
Orion served several roles in ancient Greek culture. The story of the adventures of Orion, the hunter, is the one on which we have the most evidence; he is also the personification of the constellation of the same name; he was venerated as a hero, in the Greek sense, in the region of Boeotia; and there is one etiological passage which says that Orion was responsible for the present shape of the Strait of Sicily.
The legend of Orion was first told in full in a lost work by Hesiod. According to this version, Orion was likely the son of the sea-god Poseidon and Euryale, daughter of Minos, King of Crete. Orion could walk on the waves because of his father; he walked to the island of Chios where he got drunk and attacked Merope, daughter of Oenopion, the ruler there. In vengeance, Oenopion blinded Orion and drove him away. Orion stumbled to Lemnos where Hephaestus told his servant, Cedalion, to guide Orion to the uttermost East where Helios, the Sun, healed him. Orion returned to Chios to punish Oenopion, but the king hid away underground and escaped Orion's wrath. Orion's next journey took him to Crete where he hunted with the goddess Artemis and her mother Leto, and in the course of the hunt, threatened to kill every beast on Earth. Mother Earth objected and sent a giant scorpion to kill Orion. The creature succeeded, and after his death, the goddesses asked Zeus to place Orion among the constellations. Zeus consented and, as a memorial to the hero's death, added the Scorpion to the heavens as well More on Orion
Roman School, 17th Century. Both Michelangelo and Raphael worked in Rome, making it the centre
of High Renaissance; in the 17th century it was the centre of the Baroque
movement represented by Bernini and Pietro da Cortona. From the 17th century
the presence of classical remains drew artists from all over Europe including
Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Piranesi, Pannini and Mengs.
In the
17th century Italian art was diffused mainly from Rome, the indisputable centre
of the Baroque.
Roman
Mannerism, spread abroad by the prolific work of Federico and Taddeo Zuccari,
was continued by Roncalli, called Pomarancio and especially by Giuseppe Cesari,
called Cavaliere d'Arpino, whose reputation was immense. The reaction against
Mannerism engendered two different movements, which were sometimes linked
together: one was realist with Caravaggio, the other eclectic and decorative
with the Carracci.
Caravaggio
brought about the greatest pictorial revolution of the century. His imposing
compositions, deliberately simplified, are remarkable for their rigorous sense
of reality and for the contrasting light falling from one side that accentuates
the volumes. He changed from small paintings of genre and still-life, clear in
light and cool in colour, to harsh realism, strongly modelled volumes and
dramatic light and shade. His work, like his life, caused much scandal and
excited international admiration.
Among the Italian disciples of Caravaggio Carlo
Saraceni was the only direct Venetian follower. Bartolomeo Manfredi imitated
Caravaggio's genre paintings; Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter Artemisia
Gentileschi showed a marked realism. Caravaggio's biographer and enemy,
Giovanni Baglione underwent his influence. More Roman School, 17th Century
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