Practice question · Match the pairs
Match each classical text to what painters took from it.
- Ovid, Metamorphoses
- Virgil, Aeneid
- Apuleius, The Golden Ass
- Sixteenth-century mythographies
- Cupid and Psyche
- Transformation stories, the dominant source
- Mediated the material for artists who read no Latin
- Trojan and Roman subjects, and Dido
Hints
- Three are ancient texts and one is a later intermediary.
- The handbook tradition is the last.
Show the answer
- Ovid, Metamorphoses → Transformation stories, the dominant source
- Virgil, Aeneid → Trojan and Roman subjects, and Dido
- Apuleius, The Golden Ass → Cupid and Psyche
- Sixteenth-century mythographies → Mediated the material for artists who read no Latin
Why
The fourth entry is the one usually left out and does a great deal of work. Many painters read no Latin, so the mythographies were the practical source, which means the myths reached the canvas through two filters, the ancient text and its sixteenth-century digest.
Practise Greco-Roman Sources I: the Gods and Their Texts
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Art History I is free to start.
More questions on Greco-Roman Sources I: the Gods and Their Texts
- Why do Renaissance mythological paintings use Roman rather than Greek names for the gods?
- Which are reasons patrons commissioned mythological subjects?
- Sort each attribute by the deity it identifies.
- The Ovide moralisé read the Metamorphoses as Christian allegory.
- How many books does Ovid's Metamorphoses contain?
- Complete the account of the classical sources.
- Arrange the steps of identifying a mythological subject, in order.
- Renaissance patrons commissioned depictions of pagan deities without compromising their Christian faith.…
- Homer reached most Renaissance painters directly in the original Greek.