Perseus and Andromeda

Cavalier d’Arpino came back repeatedly to this famous mythological fable in various painting, clearly to fulfill the demand of his large clientele. In this version—the replica of an autograph on slate of 1592-95, today at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna—an extensive intervention of his collaborators is quite likely. Andromeda, whose beauty had been compared to that of the Nereids—who, offended, had appealed to Poseidon to take revenge—had been tied to a cliff to be devoured by a sea monster. Freed by Perseus, she then became his spouse. The sudden arrival of Perseus riding Pegasus is a variation on the theme introduced by Ovid’s Metamorphosis.