Italian, active 1531-1574

Saturn and the Nymph Philyra,
ca. 1565
Engraving and etching
Museum Purchase

1988.27

Bonasone's image may share something with the impudently imaginative erotic work of Giulio Romano. But it also uses an etching and engraving technique to imitate the colorist sensuality of Venetian painting. Saturn, who was the most powerful god before Zeus, seduces the nymph Philyra by taking the form of a horse, evading his wife Rhea. Though Philyra turned into a linden tree out of sheer horror when she gave birth to the centaur Chiron (half-man, half-horse), her son turned out to be so wise that he became the instructor of the hero Achilles. The pastoral setting here is both innocent and monstrous. No explanation can demystify the erotic, which fuses beast and god. The eeriness of the erotic is made unassailable in this scene. But is it the power of woman that can connect such forces or is woman degraded through male mythmaking? Ovid describes how Arachne was punished for depicting this scene on a tapestry because it showed the crimes of the gods.


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