Biblis and Caunus

According to Ovid (Metamorphoses IX, 451–665), Biblis fell in love with her twin brother, Caunus, who spurned her advances for fear of the gods’ retribution. In his treatment of the mythological subject, Laurent Delvaux, who was active in London after 1717 and in Rome from 1727 to 1733, took his inspiration from an ancient figural group that had been completed by Pierre Le Gros. This was the Amor and Psyche group, excavated in 1711 at the Villa Hadriana at Tivoli as a fragment lacking the arms and heads. Pierre Le Gros transformed it into a Caunus and Biblis group by replacing heads, which, unlike the lost originals that would have been kissing, now showed Caunus turning away from the advances of his sister Biblis and pulling her hair. The once-lost group became hugely popular throughout the eighteenth century, as numerous repetitions – such as this one by Laurent Delvaux – demonstrate. While in Rome, Delvaux made an initial, larger version of the twins, which is now at Woburn Abbey in England. The Berlin group was probably made at Nivelles only after his residence in Rome.