Symbolist Works 6. [antikvár]

Gustave Moreau was steeped in classical culture from his earliest childhood, thanks to his father Louis Moreau, an architect and former pupil of Charles Percier, one of the instigators of the French Empire style. A1660 edition of the fifteen books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated into French and edited by Pierre du Ryer, took pride of place in Louis' library of antiquarian books, now preserved at the Musée Gustave-Moreau in Paris. The book's condition, with torn pages and sketches filling the margins, testifies to its continued and intensive use by Gustave, throughout his life. Moreau was, it seems, just as fascinated by the engraved illustrations as by Ovid's story-teiling, and Pierre du Ryer's didactic moralising. Stories from this pivotal source of classical iconography were the inspiration for a number of works by Moreau, including Európa, Narcissus, the Pierides, Hercules with Nessus and Deianira, Phaeton, Perseus freeing Andromeda and, later, Semele. Moreau's library alsó included a number of popular reference works on the most celebrated ancient mythologies, such as Francois Noél's two-volume Dictionnaire de la fable ou Mythologie grecque, latiné, égyptienne... (Paris, 1801) or C. A. Demoustier's Les Lettres a Emilie sur la mythologie (Paris, 1826). Towards the end of his life, this book was placed on a shelf in Moreau's bedroom. Perseus, born of the unión of the nymph Danaé with Jupiter (in the form of a shower of gold), was endowed by the gods with fabulous powers. His divine strength enabled him to behead the gorgon Medusa - whose gazé turnéd her victims to stone - thereby summoning into existence the winged horse Pegasus, who sprang from the monster's severed, bleeding neck. In his commentary on the myth (the eighteenth story in Book IV of the Metamorphoses), Pierre du Ryer notes that '[Perseus] was said to possess the shoes and sword of Mercury, the helmet of Orcus (the Román name for Hades or Pluto) and the shield of Pallas. He was thus able to transport himself through the air.' With wings on his heels and helmet, Perseus was quite able to fly unaided, yet illustrations of the myth (including one on page 183 of Moreau's own 1660 edition of the Metamorphoses) often show him astride Pegasus, flying to the rescue of the innocent Andromeda. The daughter of Cepheus, King of Ethiopia, and Cassiopea, Andromeda was proclaimed by her mother to be more beautiful than the Nereids, the daughters of Nereus the "wise old man of the sea". To avenge the Nereids, the enraged Neptune sent a monster to ravage Cepheus's lands; in a bid to save the kingdom, Andromeda was left chained to a rock, at the monster's mercy. Flying above Ethiopia, Perseus saw her plight, landed beside her and feli in love, but was threatened by the monster. Ovid describes how "bounding, upwards the brave Perseus sprung / And in mid air on hov'ring pinions hung."1 It is this precise moment, with Perseus hovering in mid-air before attacking the sea-monster, which Moreau has chosen to illustrate here. Delivered in June 1882., the watercolour was commissioned by Moreau's patron Charles Hayem. The theme is the subject of a number of different studies and versions, of which this is the most highly finished. III. 1 Eliza de Romilly Portrait of Custave Moreau - 187ó Paris, Musée Gustave-Moreau