Practice question · Select all that apply
Which are reasons patrons commissioned mythological subjects?
Hints
- Three are documented motives; one mistakes a literary language for a religion.
- Nobody involved was worshipping Jupiter.
Show the answer
- A. They displayed the patron's learning
- B. They allowed a ruler to be figured as Hercules or Apollo
- C. They permitted the nude where a devotional subject would not
Why
The fourth is the standing misreading. The myths functioned as a shared literary language for love, power, time and death, which is precisely why entirely orthodox Christians could use them so freely, and why the moralised commentaries made the arrangement respectable.
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?
- 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.
- Match each classical text to what painters took from it.
- 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.