Object Description
389 Series: TWENTY-FOUR SCENES FROM OVID'S METAMORPHOSES
A. PAN AND SYRINX (Met. 2, 697-705)
Syrinx, garments fluttering, flees into a stream filled with rushes, which are embraced by the pursuing Pan. On the left, a bridge and architecture; to right, reeds and a tree.
Bronze, gilt, 71 x 127 mm. Hole in area of reeds.
This series of plaquettes was presumably mounted, perhaps on a cabinet. Besides those described here and below, other depictions from the series are known: Corinis Transformed into a Crow (Met. 2, 496-507) and Aeneas Rescuing Anchises from Troy (Met. 13, 623- 25), which with other specimens from this series are mounted on a cabinet (now in the Bowdoin collections, Acc. no. 1972.70; see Weber, no. 860). A gilt copper relief, Daedalus and Icarus, also in the Bowdoin collections (Acc. no. 1970.28; 70 x 122 mm.; Weber, no. 861), could be modeled after a further example of the series. A later adaptation based on the series is a bronze relief, also from the Molinari Collection, Hercules Slaying Nessus (Met. 9, 125-30; Acc. no. 1967.16.9; 72 x 127 mm.). This specimen in galvanic gilding is perhaps based on an older prototype- Nessus is mistakenly depicted with a female head. Several of these motifs appear to derive from woodcut illustrations by Virgil Solis for Ovid's Metamorphosen, printed in 1563 by Feyrabent in Frankfurt (see no. 389I). In turn, many of Solis's cuts appear to be direct copies of those attributed to Bernard Salomon, which first appeared in La Metamorphose d'Ovide Figuree, de Tournes, Lyons 1557 (see no. 389G).
Bibl.: Weber, no. 860, 1.
