Reviewed by:

• Pasiones mitológicas: Tiziano, Veronese, Allori, Rubens, Ribera, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velázquez by Miguel Falomir et al.
• Oliver Noble Wood

THE POWER OF NUDES TO PROVOKE intense responses associated with classical mythology can be seen in two striking yet contrasting reactions to such images from across the ages. Pliny concludes his discussion of the statue of Aphrodite by Praxiteles in Cnidus, held to be the most perfect image of beauty in the ancient world, by noting that its effects were such that one young man, who had fallen in love with the statue, left a “stain” on Aphrodite after a night of furtive passion (Natural History XXXVI.21). Almost two and a half thousand years later, on 10 March 1914, in a famous act of protest at the arrest of the British political activist Emmeline Pankhurst, the suffragette Mary Richardson entered the National Gallery in London armed with a butcher’s knife and slashed the fiesh of the recumbent nude in Velázquez’s The Toilet of Venus (1647–51) in an attempt, in her own words, recorded in The Times the following day, to “destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history.”

Over a century later, images of Venus and other erotic scenes from classical mythology—and the varying responses that they engender—once again take center stage in Pasiones mitológicas, the beautifully illustrated exhibition catalogue of the show of the same title held at the Museo Nacional del Prado in the spring and early summer of 2021. As one might anticipate from the exhibition’s title, scenes of love, lust, and loss inspired from the tales of Ovid and other classical authorities are prominent amongst the twenty-nine works celebrated. Following three introductory chapters, discussed below, the catalogue proper (which departs at moments from the exhibition’s structuring around four principal spaces) opens with two nudes in different media: Venus of the Dolphin, a second-century AD Roman copy of a Greek statue of the goddess of love, and an anonymous woodcut illustration of a recumbent nude ogled by [End Page 157] a priapic satyr from the Aldine editio princeps of the much-prized incunable Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499). The remaining twenty-seven works are oils, on canvas or board, depicting a range of mythological figures and tales, by the A-listers in the exhibition’s subtitle and two others, Eugenio Cajés (an attributed 1604–05 Cupid, after Parmigianino) and Hendrick van den Broeck (a 1550–70 Venus and Cupid, after a drawing by Michelangelo). The eroticism of reclining Venuses and the hedonism of bacchanalia in the collection’s opening works lead into the show’s true heart, that is, Titian’s six poesie, painted for Philip II between 1553 and 1562, and works by Veronese, Rubens, and Velázquez that are in dialogue with individual paintings within Titian’s revered cycle. Following the last of these, Velázquez’s The Fable of Arachne (1655–60), and its inset quotation of Titian’s The Rape of Europa (and Rubens’s copy executed whilst on diplomatic duties in Madrid in the late 1620s), the run of paintings continues with examples from Poussin, Ribera, and Van Dyck of other directions in which pasiones mitológicas developed in the seventeenth century. The catalogue closes with two further works by Rubens: a Ganymede in the clutches of Jupiter disguised as an eagle and one of the artist’s many studies of the Three Graces. In sum, the twenty-seven paintings—fifteen from the Prado’s own collections, twelve on loan—comprise ten by Titian, six by Rubens, two each by Veronese, Poussin, and Van Dyck, and one by each of Cajés, Van den Broeck, Alessandro Allori, Velázquez, and Ribera.

The exhibition at the Prado was fianked by related shows at collaborating institutions in London and Boston, both centered more explicitly (and more exclusively) on Titian. Pasiones mitológicas was preceded by Titian: Love, Desire, Death at the National Gallery, and succeeded by Titian: Women...

 审阅者：

• 
  线粒体激情：米格尔·法洛米尔等人的提齐亚诺、委罗内塞、阿洛里、鲁本斯、里贝拉、普桑、凡·戴克、委拉斯开兹。
•  奥利弗·诺贝尔·伍德

裸体能够激起与古典神话相关的强烈反应，这可以从各个时代对此类图像的两种引人注目但截然不同的反应中看出。普林尼在结束他对普拉克西特列斯在《尼多斯》中的阿佛洛狄忒雕像的讨论时指出，它的效果是如此之大，以至于一位爱上这座雕像的年轻人离开了，该雕像被认为是古代世界最完美的美丽形象。经过一夜的秘密激情后，阿芙罗狄蒂身上留下了“污点”（ 《自然历史》 XXXVI.21）。大约两半千年后的 1914 年 3 月 10 日，为了抗议英国政治活动家埃米琳·潘克赫斯特 (Emmeline Pankhurst) 被捕，妇女参政论者玛丽·理查森 (Mary Richardson) 手持屠刀进入伦敦国家美术馆，砍掉了鱼。委拉斯开兹的《维纳斯的厕所》（1647-51）中躺着的裸体，用她自己的话来说，她试图“摧毁神话史上最美丽女人的形象”，该图记录在第二天的《泰晤士报》上。

一个多世纪后，维纳斯的图像和其他古典神话中的色情场景——以及它们所引起的不同反应——再次成为《Pasiones mitológicas》的中心舞台，这是在国家博物馆举办的同名展览的精美插图展览目录。普拉多将于 2021 年春季和初夏举行。正如人们从展览的标题中所预料到的那样，受奥维德和其他古典权威的故事启发的爱、欲望和失落的场景在 29 件庆祝作品中占据了突出地位。在下面讨论的三个介绍性章节之后，目录本身（有时与围绕四个主要空间的展览结构有所不同）以不同媒介中的两个裸体开始：海豚的维纳斯，公元二世纪的罗马复制品，希腊雕像爱之女神，还有一幅匿名木刻插图，画的是一位斜躺着的裸体者，被一位阴茎勃勃的色狼注视着[完第 157 页]，出自阿尔丁版《Hypnerotomachia Poliphili》 （1499 年）的 Aldine 版本。剩下的 27 件作品是画布或木板上的油画，描绘了一系列神话人物和故事，由展览副标题中的一线艺术家和另外两件作品组成，分别是尤金尼奥·卡耶斯（Eugenio Cajés，1604-05 年丘比特，以帕玛强尼诺命名）和Hendrick van den Broeck（1550-70 年的维纳斯和丘比特，根据米开朗基罗的绘画）。 该系列开场作品中斜倚的维纳斯的情欲和酒神狂欢的享乐主义引出了展览的真正核心，即提香在 1553 年至 1562 年间为腓力二世绘制的六首诗，以及委罗内塞、鲁本斯和委拉斯开兹的作品。与提香受人尊敬的系列中的个别画作对话。继委拉斯开兹的《阿拉克尼寓言》 （1655-60）以及其中插入的提香《掠夺欧罗巴》 （以及 1620 年代末在马德里执行外交任务时创作的鲁本斯副本）之后，这一系列画作继续普桑、里贝拉和凡·戴克的例子说明了 17 世纪pasiones mitologicas发展的其他方向。该目录以鲁本斯的另外两幅作品结束：木星手中伪装成一只鹰的木卫三，以及艺术家对美惠三女神的众多研究之一。总而言之，这二十七幅画——十五幅来自普拉多自己的收藏，十二幅是借来的——其中十幅是提香的，六幅是鲁本斯的，委罗内塞、普桑和范戴克各两幅，卡耶斯、范登布罗克各一幅、亚历山德罗·阿洛里、委拉斯开兹和里贝拉。

普拉多博物馆的展览与伦敦和波士顿合作机构的相关展览同时进行，两者都更明确（也更专门）地以提香为中心。国家美术馆展出的《Pasiones mitologicas》之前是《提香：爱、欲望、死亡》 ，之后是《提香：女人》……