Artistic Analysis Essay
Antonio Tempesta, a 17th Century Italian painter and printmaker. He was very active throughout his whole life, and created this piece in 1606. As an artist he was heavily influenced by stories of all kinds and loved to draw them. Many of his large collection of printings, were of hunting scenes, or Catholic stories. This theme holds true for this painting as Tempesta depicts Ovid’s old story of the hunter who suffers the loss of a deer which he did not mean to kill. In this painting by Antonio Tempesta, Tempesta truly represents the emotion behind Ovid’s Story of Cyparissus. When first looking at this piece, the eye floats immediately to Cyparissus’ metamorphoses, in which he is transforming into a cypress tree. His hair is displayed as roughening into bush like branches, very much like the branches that grow on a cypress tree. Using the body language of Cyparissus, you can easily decipher the sadness on his face and in his eyes, as he transforms from a man. He is seen as calling out to Apollo, when he is speaking to him about his loss of the beloved deer. Apollo is there with a lyre in his hand which had been described in the text. Yet, Tempesta has chosen to leave out the bow, which like the lyre Apollo was described as having. Here, Apollo has his hand up to Cyparissus as he is transforming him into a cypress. Cyparissus, in his transformation seems to be looking away from the sacred stag, which he feels so guilty for slaughtering. This action is displays how Cyparissus is trying to move on and forget about the horrible crime he has committed. This is the most interesting part of the piece in which Cyparissus is obviously craning his neck in his last seconds so that he doesn’t have to be reminded of the atrocity he committed. This subtle representation of Cyparissus’ emotion perfectly represents Ovid’s work and intention for the imagery represented in his writing. Lacking differences from his piece and Ovid’s writing, Tempesta perfectly “rediscovers” Ovid’s story, and finds a way to capture the scene that ovid had set hundreds and hundreds of years before.
http://www.stephenongpin.com/TEMPESTA-Antonio-DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=45&tabindex=44&artistid=178410
http://www.stephenongpin.com/TEMPESTA-Antonio-DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=45&tabindex=44&artistid=178410
Context Essay
Ovid’s the Story of Cyparissus, which seems to be the only famous telling of the mythological story, is the story of the a hunter who accidentally kills a sacred deer who he was very close to, is in Book Ten of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Book Ten starts with The Story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and is then brought into another story of loss, The Story of Cyparissus. Like Orpheus, Cyparissus, loses an entity he held dear to him by his own error. For Orpheus, it was looking back at Eurydice, for Cyparissus it was accidentally shooting the great stag. The two similar stories also have very similar endings as Cyparissus loses his way because of his loss and goes from most loved to not wanting to go on any longer, and Orpheus goes from a loving man who believed in love and fought for it, to a man who has lost his way and has turned his back on loving women. The Story of Cyparissus even ends with Orpheus chastising women a song in which women seek only the forbidden things that they could be punished for. Ovid plays with loss a lot in book ten, while the story after Cyparissus, is very brief story about a trojan boy taken by Jove, the following relates to the same type of loss. The Story of Apollo and Hyacinthus, come right back to the idea of loss by one’s own hand. In the story, Apollo kills a good friend when he throws a disc into the air which ultimately comes back and kills Hyacinthus. Apollo is wrecked by the loss of his friend but comes to realize that it truly hadn’t been his fault and copes with it by keeping Hyacinthus in his heart and songs. This story is extremely similar to the Story of Cyparissus in the sense that Apollo and Cyparissus both lose someone dear to them by their own hand, but ultimately their coping mechanisms are different as Apollo moves on and Cyparissus is not able to. Ultimately Ovid plays a lot with loss in the beginning of Book ten with the use of many stories including the Story of Cyparissus.
Rhetorical Analysis Essay
Throughout The Story of Cyparissus, Ovid beautifully uses poetic devices to strengthen and emphasize meaning. On line 113, Ovid is in the heart of describing the beautiful adornments on the sacred deer, and uses a genius hyperbaton to represent one of the adornments. Ovid says the phrase, “pendebant tereti gemmata monilia collo”(113). This phrase means: necklaces set with polished jewels were suspended by the neck. What is really beautiful though, is not the english, but the latin. Ovid supports his statement here about the beautiful necklace by wrapping the statement describing the necklace with how the necklace was supported. On one side the verb saying that it was suspended, on the other saying how it was suspended with an ablative of means saying that it was suspended “by the neck”. It really emphasizes the beauty of the necklace by almost enclosing and protecting it with the other words, making the words on the inside seem even more magical. In the final lines of the story Ovid uses a beautiful polysyndeton when Apollo is telling Cyparissus of all that will happen. He tells him, “lugebere nobis lugebisque alios aderisque dolentibus”(141-142). This polysyndeton emphasizes how much sadness will come from the events that have occurred. Not only will he be mourned, but he will mourn others, and he will always feel the pain. This is just a beautiful ending to the story and an amazing way to end it especially since it is continuing the recurring theme in Book ten of sadness.