Antiope
by Michael Field (Pseud. for Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper)
NOONTIDE’S whiteness of full sun
Illumes her sleep ;
Its heat is on her limbs and one
White arm with sweep
Of languor falls around her head :
She cuddles on the lap of earth ;
While almost dead
Asleep, forgetful of his mirth,
A dimpled Cupid at her side
Sprawls satisfied.
Conquered, weary with the light,
Her eyelids orb :
Summer’s plenitude of might
Her lips absorb,—
Uplifted to the burning air
And with repletion fallen apart.
Her form is bare,
But her doe-skin binds each dart
Of her woodland armory,
Laid idle by.
She is curled beyond the rim
Of oaks that slide
Their lowest branches, long and slim,
Close to her side ;
Their foliage touches her with lobes
Half-gay, half-shadowed, green and brown :
Her white throat globes,
Thrown backward, and her breasts sink down
With the supineness of her sleep,
Leaf-fringed and deep.
Where her hand has curved to slip
Across a bough,
Fledged Cupid’s slumberous fingers grip
The turf and how
Close to his chin he hugs her cloak !
His torch reversed trails on the ground
With feeble smoke ;
For in noon’s chastity profound,
In the blank glare of mid-day skies,
Love’s flambeau dies.
But the sleepers are not left
To breathe alone ;
A god is by with hoofs deep-cleft,
Legs overgrown
With a rough pelt and body strong :
Yet must the head and piercing eyes
In truth belong
To some Olympian in disguise ;
From lawless shape or mien unkempt
They are exempt.
Zeus, beneath these oaken boughs,
As satyr keeps
His watch above the woman’s brows
And backward sweeps
Her cloak to flood her with the noon ;
Curious and fond, yet by a clear
Joy in the boon
Of beauty franchised—beauty dear
To him as to a tree’s bent mass
The sunny grass.
List of Works:
1. Jupiter and Antiope, Giuseppe Cesari detto Cavalier d’Arpino, Date Unknown
2. Jupiter and Antiope, Léon Davent, Etching, 1540, Metropolitan Museum of Art
3. The Seduction of Antiope by Zeus in the Form of a Faun, Carlo Maratta, Date Unknown
The scene goes back to the Greek legend. Narrated by the Roman scribe Ovid in his “Metamorphoses” and since the Renaissance repeatedly thematized in sculptures. The beautiful Antiope, clothed only in a blue cloth, lies to the left, leaning on a white cushion with a bandaged cloth in front of a group of trees. She is surrounded by four erotes. Armor with bow and arrow hovering above her head. From the right, a satyr has approached, into which the godfather Zeus has changed. Delicate color, contrasted only by the blue and red of the cloths and the bright green in the treetop. With fine lighting from top left.
4. Jupiter and Antiope, Jean Simon Berthélemy, 1778
5. Jupiter and Antiope, Vanloo Charles (Carle), 1753, Hermitage Museum
6. Jupiter and Antiope, Charles Michel Ange Challe, Date Unknown
7. Jupiter in Love with Antiope, Etching on Copper, Artist Unknown, Torino
8. Jupiter and Antiope, Ignaz Elhafen, 1658, Louvre
9. Jupiter and Antiope, Jacopo Caraglio, Print, Museum of Budapest
10. Jupiter and Antiope, Ivor Henry Thomas Hele, Oil on Board, 1965, Australia
11. Jupiter and Antiope, Charles-Antoine Coypel, Histoire Universelle, 1740
12. Jupiter and Antiope, Attributed to Alessandro Gherardini, Date Unknown, Livorno
The composition of this painting is clearly related to a work by Luca Giordano depicting the Sleeping Venus with Cupid and a Satyr in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. That painting, signed and dated 1663, was likely part of a series of works by Giordano, based on mythological themes and subjects from ancient history, that were painted for Andrea d’Avalos, Prince of Montesarchio. The present work differs from the Capodimonte picture in several respects: the figure of Cupid is not blindfolded, the cup of spilled wine is not depicted at lower left, and there is the addition of a globe encircled by a serpent (probably symbolizing vanity and lust) that appears at lower right under the figure of Antiope.
An attribution to the Florentine painter, Alessandro Gherardini, has been suggested for the present painting. Gherardini would certainly have been aware of Giordano whose work was favored by such Florentine collectors as the del Rosso and Sanminiati families, and Pietro Andrea Andreini. Giordano himself came to Florence in 1682 and completed several important commissions including the decoration of the cupola of the Corsini chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, and the gallery of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. Though Gherardini was working in northern Italy during Giordano’s sojourn in Florence, he returned to his native city shortly thereafter and the impact of Giordano’s work is apparent in Gheradini’s paintings of this period, such as the Triumph of Faith on the vault of San Jacopo tra i Fossi, Florence, and the Miracle of Saint Nicholas of Bari, in Palazzo Dosi, Pontremoli. Given the great popularity of Giordano’s work in Florence, it is conceivable that Gherardini knew the composition of Venus with Cupid and a Satyr through other versions or drawings, and presented it in his own idiom.
(Source: Sotheby’s)
13. Jupiter and Antiope, Circle of GIrolamo Brusaferro, c1750s
Frisky Satyr 