Page 38 - Jacques Blanchard - Myth and Allegory
P. 38
revised by Richard Beresford,Yale University Press, New canvas; with added strips, 77 3/4 x 95 5/8 in. (197.5 x
Haven/London, 1999, p. 160, col. Illus. p. 161, fig. 204. 242.9 cm), Metropolitan Museum of At, NewYork, Gift
of Harry Payne Bingham, 1937 (37.162).
29 L. Salomé, ‘Les Surprises des Blanchard’, included in
‘Blanchard, la redécouverte du Titien de la France’, in 34 The painting is no. 6 on the descriptive list in Dòzallier
Dossier de l’Art, no. 45, March 1998, p. 21. d’Argenville’s Abrògò of 1762, loc. cit.
30 Thuillier, op. cit., cat. no. 79, pp. 240-243, illus. 35 R. Beresford, priv. comm., 17 January 2008,‘I think your
Venus and Adonis is an earlier picture and comes from the
31 Metamorphoses, Bk X: 708-739, ‘She warned him’ …’but his hôtel le Barbier’.
courage defied the warning.’
36 Thuillier, op. cit. cat. no. 47, p. 170-172, illus.
32 W. Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, ed. 1593, Stanza 39, ll.
229-234: 37 (R. Beresford, 2008, email, 7 February).
“Fondling,” she saith, “since I have hemm’d thee here
Within the circuit of this ivory pale, I’ll be a park,and thou shalt 38 An identification proposed by Richard Beresford who
be my deer…’ states:‘I am actually quite happy with Mars and Rhea Silvia,
especially since discovering that (1) she fell asleep beside a
The poem was first published in 1593 and in a quarto stream in the woods and (2) had loosened the clothing over
edition, published and printed by Richard Field, who her bosom before she fell asleep. ‘…’ The one thing not
released a second edition before transferring the quite right is that Rhea set down a water jar before falling
copyright to John Harrison. By 1640, at least nine asleep, but this is the sort of thing that can easily be left
subsequent by editions of Venus and Adonis had been out.’ (R. Beresford, 2008, email, 17 January).
printed, with five more to follow that same year - making
the poem, with 16 editions in 47 years, one of the great 39 Proposed by Beverly Brown; ‘I think that the picture is a
popular successes of its era. Apart from the poems scene from Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata. It depicts
structure, one of Shakespeare’s great narrative Tancred and Clorinda… He is usually shown baptizing
innovations of the myth was to emphasis Adonis’s her, but there are a few pictures that show them meeting
romantic ambivalence. Recognizing this, Erwin Panofsky earlier on. Sometimes they are shown at a fountain. In
argued that Shakespeare might have seen a copy ofTitian’s any case, the composition is related to the so-called
‘Venus and Adonis’, (Cf: J. Doebler, ‘The Reluctant discovery pictures of satyrs pulling a veil back to reveal a
Adonis: Titian and Shakespeare’, in Shakespeare Quarterly, sleeping nude that one finds from Mantegna on. (B.
Vol. 33, No. 4, 1982, pp. 480-490). Brown, 2007, email, 13 September).
Although this identification is tempting and the poses are
33 Rubens had seen Titian’s picture in the Prado in 1628-9 much used by other artists, representations of this subject
and had made a copy, upon which he then based his own always show Clorinda asleep either with her shield or her
Venus and Adonis, painted by the mid- or late 1630s, oil on cuirass, her helmet at her side.
38
