The iconography of the abduction of Proserpina in the main Italian versions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses printed in the 16th century

Abstract

During the 16th century, Ovid’s Metamorphoses was the object of several translations and rewritings, either of single books or the whole Latin poem, which were often accompanied by valuable illustrative sets. This paper examines the different versions of Pluto’s abduction of Proserpina as described in the main Italian translations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses printed in the 16th century (Agostini, Dolce, Anguillara). My primary focus is on the illustrative sets which are essential to understanding to the transmission of classical mythology between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. On the one hand, the article aims to understand the artists’ choices of which elements of the story to illustrate, and the relationship between the text and the images. On the other hand, my purpose is to situate these versions of the myth of Proserpina in both the literary and artistic history of the Italian Renaissance, by comparing the rewritings of Ovid’s Metamorphoses with other broadly contemporary works.