The Tale of Atalanta: Guido Reni and the Poets, currently on view at the National Pinacoteca of Bologna, examines the friendship and collaboration between Bolognese poets and painters including not only Reni, but also Agostino and Ludovico Carracci, Artemisia Gentileschi and Lavinia Fontana, among others. The exhibition offers a handful of extraordinary works, though at its heart are two magnificent, nearly identical versions of the famous painting Atalanta and Hippomenes (1620-25) by Guido Reni, based upon a tale taken from Book X of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Our maiden is Atalanta, the beautiful, and swift hunter who, not wishing to marry, challenges her suitors to a footrace, believing herself unbeatable. We might also add that Atalanta kills those suitors who lose against her: “You cannot have me,” she said, “unless you outrun me; / come race against me! A bride for the winner, / death to the losers. Those are the rules of the contest.” (Book X: 677-679). Cruel as her conditions were, ‘a foolhardy throng of admirers took up the wager’ (X: 681) such was her beauty. The young and slender Hippomenes is only able to succeed with the help of Aphrodite and her gift of three golden apples. Reni depicts the moment when Hippomenes has suddenly dropped a golden apple to the ground and Atalanta cannot resist pausing to pick it up. With the aid of this stratagem Hippomenes manages to overcome Atalanta and win the race.
The two figures are set within a nocturnal landscape, their legs crossed in the center of the painting, with Hippomenes glancing backward at Atalanta as she bends down to retrieve the second of the apples, one of which is already resting in the palm of her left hand. The third is presumably still in Hippomenes’ left hand which is hidden behind his back, and not visible to the viewer. It will be the last to fall and ensure the youth his victory. The two life sized figures are entirely nude, save for their billowing garbs, the primary purpose of which seems to be to serve as the proverbial fig leaf. The supreme genius of the painting consists in the chiasm formed by the X-shaped crossing of their legs (which may be a reference, among other things, to the Book in which Ovid’s tale occurs).The decussation is a masterful stroke on the part of Reni, who undoubtedly read his Ovid closely – for Atalanta is ambivalent about Hippomenes, uncertain whether she wishes to win or be won, and reluctant to see this bold suitor join the previous young men who have perished for their folly. The intertwining of their legs is the symbolical representation of this ambiguity and her inner turmoil. Even while she leads with her left leg she is falling behind with her right. It is also a foreshadowing of the outcome; that is, Hippomenes’ ultimate victory and hence their sexual intertwining which would occur shortly after inside a shrine near the temple of Cybele. The couple would be punished for their defilement of the holy place by being transformed into a pair of lions, fated to ‘champ at the bit of the harness /on either side of the yoke of Cybele’s chariot.’ (X: 819-20).
Reni has not depicted, as it is sometimes thought, the moment of Hippomenes’ triumph, for he still holds the third apple which he has yet to drop. Instead, the painter has chosen to show the moment when Hippomenes has finally taken the lead and is bound to win with the aid of Aphrodite and her irresistible fruit, itself a symbol of sexual temptation. In short, Reni has depicted the most pregnant instant, not the ultimate moment of success but rather the penultimate scene, leaving it to the viewer to imagine the climax which is presently to come. Reni employs a similar approach in the other great masterpiece of the exhibition, The Massacre of the Innocents (1611), as described in the Gospel of Matthew. It is a scene of shocking violence, but one which was not unfamiliar to painters of Reni’s era – depicted also by Peter Paul Rubens in 1610, and half a century earlier by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger. It so happened that on the same day as I saw this painting, the Southport child killer was sentenced to life in prison for having brutally stabbed to death three young girls in July 2024. I could not help but see this painting in the shadow of the horror of which I was being reminded by the headlines of the day. The Massacre is about the killing of the most vulnerable, the most helpless and that is why it grips and terrifies us, reminding us that society’s most defenseless will always, by their very nature, be a target for those who are determined to wreak havoc, cruelty and bloodshed.
The interesting aesthetic question is how the depiction of such a terrible scene can still be regarded as beautiful art. Reni’s contemporary, the Neapolitan poet Giambattista Marino confronted this very problem in a short rhyme: ‘Do you not see that while the bloody/ throng of children you revive, new death you them give?/ Gentle craftsman know/ even in cruelty, you know well,/ when a tragic event can be also a dear sight,/ and often horror goes with delight.’ I am tempted to heed the South Korean philosopher, Jung Ja Park in regarding such works of art not as instances of beauty, but of the sublime. As she observes in her book Sublime Aesthetics: Artistic Principles of Violence and the Grotesque (2024): ‘… there are certain moments when we stand before something not beautiful, but rather grotesque or repulsive, and we feel a powerful aesthetic emotion—a shiver, a thrill, a deep sense of impact.’
There are other extraordinary surprises in store for the visitor to this exhibition, not least of which is Lavinia Fontana’s Giuditta con la testa di Oloferne (ca. 1600). The theme of Judith and Holofernes was a favorite among artists of that era: perhaps the most memorable is Caravaggio’s depiction of Judith in the act of severing Holofernes’ head from his neck while he still lays in bed. Fontana, widely regarded as the first female career artist in Western Europe, would also depict Judith with the decapitated torso of Holofernes as she places the head into a sack held by her handmaid. In this case, Judith is gripping Holofernes’ head by the hair with her left hand; with her right hand she holds her sword aloft. On the right side of the canvas and in the rear is her maidservant, as young and comely as Judith herself. In fact, the painting is a dual portrait, and it may very well be that the figure of Judith is a self-portrait. Her dress and jewelry are ornate and rendered with consummate skill. Indeed, if there is any criticism to be made it is that her necklace, for example, is so over the top that one is distracted from the true theme of the painting, which is not decorative jewelry after all, but the victory of a young, heroic woman (femme forte) over a powerful Assyrian general and the enemy of her people.
Like Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi would also depict Judith in the act of slaying Holofernes. In this exhibition, however, we are presented with a 1622 full length portrait by Gentileschi, ‘one of the rare and most remarkable examples of portraiture’ in her oeuvre. The identity of the figure is uncertain: what we can be sure of is that it is a knight, bearing the white cross and green mantle associated with the Mauritian order. The painting is brightly lit and not rendered with the chiaroscuro that characterizes the work of the Caravaggisti, with which Artemisia and her father Orazio Gentileschi were associated.
Other notable works are included in this captivating exhibition. I have focused on but a handful that stood out for various reasons. This exhibition, which runs through February 16, will reward the visitor not only with its most monumental and glorious works, but also with its smaller, though no less precious gems of early 17th century Bolognese painting.