Helios and Phaeton

This intricate, relatively uncommon pictorial theme has its source in the Metamorphoses of Ovid (II:19–48), which was made accessible in Italian through a translation and reworking by Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara (Le Metamorfosi di Ovidio, 1561). The young Phaeton kneels before his father, the sun god Helios (who is also identified with Apollo) and requests permission to borrow the sun chariot, being prepared by the Horae and visible here in the left-hand background, for one day. This desire will have fatal consequences for the youth. Helios, who is seated beneath an arch decorated with zodiacal symbols, is identified by Apollo’s lyre, and surrounded by personifications of the seasons: the young woman on his right, crowned with flowers, and shown proffering flowers to a number of cupids, embodies Springtime; seated behind Phaeton is Summer, who takes the form of a woman holding a mirror in her hands; reclining on the right foreground next to a vase filled with grapes is the sleeping, inebriated Autumn; and visible to his left is the seated, freezing figure of Winter, at whose feet a pair of braziers, filled with glowing coals, provide a minimal defence against the cold. Striding along behind Winter, finally, is the winged personification of Time, the Titan Chronos, the all-devouring father of Zeus. The aged giant eats – as recognized by Alessandro Della Latta – a stone: this was a trick of his wife Rea, who wanted to avoid having Zeus devoured by Chronos alongside her other offspring, and who therefore replaced the newborn with this object. This famous painting was engraved by Nicolas Pérelle before 1666, and later by the Florentine artist Cesare Fantetti as well, this time laterally reversed. In all likelihood, moreover, this was the same work that was presented by the painter and art dealer Jean-Michel Picart to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1674 for their appraisal. It also seems possible, despite some uncertainty that the Berlin picture is identical with the painting referred to as “Seasons” in the inventory of the collector Michel Passart in 1684. Beginning in 1773, this mythological composition was part of the collection of Frederick the Great, and was included in Oesterreich’s description of the Neues Palais in Potsdam. In the past, this work has been given a date that seems too late (1633–38), for it seems to have been executed just before 1630. Certain compositional elements are reminiscent for example of Poussin’s Parnassus (Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1629: the figure of Apollo), or of his Death of Germanicus of 1628 (Minneapolis, Institute of Arts); the latter painting is also close to the present picture with regard to the colour scheme. The colour palette, with its neo-Venetian orientation, and the inspiration from antiquity, represents a connection to Poussin’s mythological scenes from the late 1620s, which involve free adaptations of works by Titian, an especially striking example being the Midas and Bacchus in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Detectable in the marvellous painting Diana and Endymion, formerly in the collection of Cardinal Mazarin and now in the Institute of Arts in Detroit, are significant similarities, and these include the format (identical in height, but 15 cm wider), suggesting the possibility that it functioned originally as a pendant to the present picture. Thematically as well, a connection with Helios and Phaeton cannot be excluded, particularly when we consider the motif of the chariot of Apollo/Helios in the background, a quadriga drawn by four horses. Also in the Roman years, albeit slightly later, Poussin repeated the chariot of Apollo/Helios, once again surrounded by zodiacal symbols, and set high up in the heavens in his Empire of Flora (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister), commissioned by the Marquis of Valguarnera in 1631. The figure of Apollo in the Berlin picture is repeated in the Parnassus in the Prado and in the figure of Crocus in the Dresden Empire of Flora, a masterwork from the first Roman years. Roberto Contini | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019