Ovidians - II

Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio
after Perino del Vaga
Apollo and Daphne
ca. 1520-40
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

François Bonnemer
Apollo and Daphne
1675
oil on canvas
Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban

Adriaen van der Werff
Apollo and Daphne
ca. 1693
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Ferdinand Bol
Vertumnus and Pomona
1644
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Abraham Bloemaert
Pomona and Vertumnus
ca. 1620-30
drawing
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Paul Gauguin
Abduction of Europa
ca. 1898-99
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Nicolaes Verkolje
Abduction of Europa
ca. 1735-45
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Bon Boullogne
Semele
ca. 1704
oil on canvas
Musée de Tessé, Le Mans

Jacques Blanchard
Danaë
ca. 1630-33
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Anton Mirou
Landscape with Mercury and Herse
ca. 1600-1620
oil on copper
private collection

Johann Heinrich Schönfeld
Abduction of Proserpine
ca. 1640-42
oil on canvas
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

Jacopo Vignali
Cyparissus mourning his Pet Deer
ca. 1625
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg

Peter Paul Rubens (figures) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (landscape)
Pan and Syrinx
1617
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Bacchiacca (Francesco Ubertini)
Leda and the Swan
ca. 1518-20
oil on panel
Musée Saint-Loup, Troyes

Franz Schrotzberg
Leda and the Swan
1839
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Johann Liss
Salmacis and Hermaphroditus
ca. 1625
oil on canvas
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

Scene: The sea-coast near Argos. A mound represents a shrine (with altars) to the major gods of the city.  One side-passage is imagined as leading to the city, the other to the sea. 

[Enter Chorus of the daughters of Danaus, from the seaward direction. They are followed by Danaus who goes to the shrine and keeps a look-out towards the city.]

Chorus:  

May Zeus, god of suppliants, look graciously upon

our band, which set forth by ship

from the fine sands at the mouth

of the Nile. We have left the land of Zeus,* 

which borders on Syria, as fugitives,

not through public banishment for bloodshed

after condemnation by state decree,

but of our own accord, in flight from men,

abhorring marriage with the sons of Aegyptus

and their impious thoughts.

Danaus, our father, the originator of our plan,

the leader of our band, surveying the situation like a gameboard,

ordained this as the most honourable of painful options,

to flee headlong over the waves of the sea

and put in to the land of Argos, from whence

originates our race, which claims to derive

from the touch and breath of Zeus

on the gadfly-driven heifer.

So to what more friendly land

than this could we come

with these hand-held emblems of the suppliant,

these wool-wreathed olive branches?

O ancestral gods of Argos, 

to whom belong the city, the land and its clear waters –

both the gods above, and the chthonic gods

inhabiting their highly-honoured abodes,

and thirdly Zeus the Saviour, protector of the houses

of pious men – receive as suppliants

this female band, and may the country show them

a spirit of respect. As for the numerous,

wanton male swarm of the sons of Aegyptus,

before they set foot on this marshy

shore, send them to the open sea,

them and their swift-oared vessel and there may they meet

the battering of storm and squall, thunder and lightning,

and the rain-bearing winds

of the savage sea, and perish,

before ever mounting the beds from which Right bars them,

appropriating us, who belong to their father's brother,

against our wills! 

– Aeschylus, from Suppliants (ca. 470-460 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*Egypt could be so-called because it contained the famous oracle of Zeus Ammon at Siwa; but to the Danaids it is more important that Egypt was the place where Zeus miraculously begot their ancestor Epaphus