Jupiter Disguised as Diana Seducing Callisto is a painting by Angelica Kauffman, painted during her 1766-1781 stay in Great Britain and now in a private collection. It shows Jupiter in disguise as Diana seducing Callisto. It was engraved by Thomas Burke. It is held in a private collection.
The painting depicts a classic scene of seduction of a girl, but this time is between two beautiful girls. The one sitting on the left has a crescent moon in her hair, which is an attribute of the goddess Diana, but at her feet sits an eagle with lightning in its paws - a symbol of Jupiter, indicating that this is the supreme god in another form. Although the painting follows the European tradition, Kaufman's depiction has several significant deviations from it. In the 18th-century painting, it was usual to emphasize the differences between male and female characters, depicting the former in darker colors. In Kaufman’s painting there is no such contrast; there is no gender difference indicated. In addition, in the depicted scene, the traditional gender roles of an active male and a passive female are absent. Although Diana (Jupiter) takes the initiative, leaning towards the nymph, Callisto does not look stiff and passive, she responds with her gaze, thereby expressing her own desire. It really seems to be a scene of lesbian seduction. To the left of Diana and Callisto is depicted Eros, who watches the scene from the bushes. He puts his finger on his lips, in a gesture indicating a call to silence, perhaps because Jupiter is deceiving, or maybe because he is witnessing something that cannot be mentioned openly, female passion. [1]
Part of a pair with Orpheus and Eurydice (the same size and format), they were both probably first owned by the French lawyer Charles Alexandre de Calonne (1734–1802). They were then sold at Skinner and Dyke auction in London on 27 March 1795 for 67 guineas to Sir Drummond Cospatrick Hamilton-Spencer-Smith, 5th Baronet (1876–1955). They were later acquired in the 1960s by a private collector, whose children sold the paintings on 5 July 2015 at Christie's for £206,500. [2]
In Greek mythology, Callisto was a nymph, or the daughter of King Lycaon; the myth varies in such details. She was believed to be one of the followers of Artemis who attracted Zeus. Many versions of Callisto's story survive. According to some writers, Zeus transformed himself into the figure of Artemis to pursue Callisto, and she slept with him believing Zeus to be Artemis. She became pregnant and when this was eventually discovered, she was expelled from Artemis's group, after which a furious Hera, the wife of Zeus, transformed her into a bear, although in some versions, Artemis is the one to give her an ursine form. Later, just as she was about to be killed by her son when he was hunting, she was set among the stars as Ursa Major by Zeus. She was the bear-mother of the Arcadians, through her son Arcas by Zeus.
Orpheus in the Underworld and Orpheus in Hell are English names for Orphée aux enfers, a comic opera with music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy. It was first performed as a two-act "opéra bouffon" at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, on 21 October 1858, and was extensively revised and expanded in a four-act "opéra féerie" version, presented at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, Paris, on 7 February 1874.
In Roman mythology, Vertumnus is the god of seasons, change and plant growth, as well as gardens and fruit trees. He could change his form at will; using this power, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses (xiv), he tricked Pomona into talking to him by disguising himself as an old woman and gaining entry to her orchard, then using a narrative warning of the dangers of rejecting a suitor to seduce her. The tale of Vertumnus and Pomona has been called "the first exclusively Latin tale."
Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann, usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, Kauffman was a skilled portraitist, landscape and decoration painter. She was, along with Mary Moser, one of two female painters among the founding members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768.
In sexuality, seduction means enticing someone into sexual intercourse or other sexual activity.
Lesbian erotica deals with depictions in the visual arts of lesbianism, which is the expression of female-on-female sexuality. Lesbianism has been a theme in erotic art since at least the time of ancient Rome, and many regard depictions of lesbianism to be erotic.
Diana and Callisto is a painting completed between 1556 and 1559 by the Italian late Renaissance artist Titian. It portrays the moment in which the goddess Diana discovers that her maid Callisto has become pregnant by Jupiter. The painting was jointly purchased by the National Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery for £45 million in March 2012. Along with its companion painting Diana and Actaeon it is displayed on an alternating basis between London and Edinburgh. There is a later version by Titian and his workshop in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Eurydice was a character in Greek mythology and the Auloniad wife of Orpheus, whom Orpheus tried to bring back from the dead with his enchanting music.
Diana and Her Companions is a painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer completed in the early to mid-1650s, now at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. Although the exact year is unknown, the work may be the earliest painting of the artist still extant, with some art historians placing it before Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and some after.
The Rape of Europa is a painting by the Venetian artist Titian, painted ca. 1560–1562. It is in the permanent collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, Massachusetts. The oil-on-canvas painting measures 178 by 205 centimetres.
Jupiter and Antiope is an oil painting by the French artist Antoine Watteau. It is also known as the Satyr and the Sleeping Nymph and was probably painted between 1714 and 1719. Intended to be placed over a doorway, today it hangs in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.
Forced seduction is a theme found frequently in Western literature wherein man-on-woman rape eventually turns into a genuine love affair. A popular example is Luke and Laura from the American soap opera General Hospital.
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. In the visual and aesthetic presentations of narrative cinema, the male gaze has three perspectives: that of the man behind the camera, that of the male characters within the film's cinematic representations; and that of the spectator gazing at the image.
The oppositional gaze is a term coined by bell hooks the 1992 essay The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators that refers to the power of looking. According to hooks, an oppositional gaze is a way that a Black person in a subordinate position communicates their status. hooks' essay is a work of feminist film theory that discusses the male gaze, Michel Foucault, and white feminism in film theory.
Pregnancy in art covers any artistic work that portrays pregnancy. In art, as in life, it is often unclear whether an actual state of pregnancy is intended to be shown. A common visual indication is the gesture of the woman placing a protective open hand on her abdomen. Historically, married women were at some stage of pregnancy for much of their life until menopause, but the depiction of this in art is relatively uncommon, and generally restricted to some specific contexts. This probably persists even in contemporary culture; despite several recent artworks depicting heavily pregnant women, one writer was "astonished at the shortage of visual images ... of pregnant women in public visual culture". A research study conducted by Pierre Bourdieu in 1963 found that the great majority of 693 French subjects thought that a photo of a pregnant woman could not, by definition, be beautiful.
Telemachus and the Nymphs of Calypso is an oil painting by the Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman, from 1782. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.
Jupiter and Callisto is a 1744 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist François Boucher, now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. It shows Jupiter disguised as Diana to seduce Callisto.
Diana and Callisto is an oil-on-canvas painting by Flemish painter Paul Bril. Probably painted in the early 1620s, it was acquired by the National Gallery, London, in 1924.
Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman. It was painted in England in 1774. It is currently displayed in the Museum of Fine Arts, in Houston, as a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Harris Masterson III. It is an oil painting on canvas. Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus is one of Kauffman's few history paintings depicting a single figure.
Cupid and Ganymede or Venus Finds Cupid Playing Dice with Ganymede is a 1782 painting by Angelica Kauffman, one of four works commissioned from her by George Bowles It is now in a private collection. It is based on Matthew Pryor's poetic reworking of an ancient myth about how Ganymede beat Cupid at dice, with the stakes being Cupid's arrows, an attribute of his divine power, and shows Cupid being chastised by his mother Venus.