Titlepage to Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet: 4 5/16 × 5 3/8 in. (11 × 13.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951
Accession Number
51.501.3851
Tags
Art Historical Context
This elegant etching, created in 1606 by Antonio Tempesta and Pieter de Jode I, serves the title page for a printed edition of Ovid’s *Metamorphoses*. Measuring just over four by five inches, the small sheet demonstrates how prints could elegantly frame one of antiquity’s most influential literary works. Ovid’s collection of transformation myths had captivated readers since Roman times, and early modern publishers often commissioned artists to design inviting frontispieces that captured the poem’s themes of change, poetry, and the gods. Executed in the delicate lines of etching—a technique th...
About the Artist
Antonio Tempesta|Pieter de Jode I · 1555–1630
Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630), known as 'Il Tempestino,' was a Florentine painter and printmaker whose extraordinary output of approximately 1,700 etchings made him one of the most influential printmakers of the early Baroque period. Born in Florence and trained under Santi di Tito and the Flemish master Joannes Stradanus, he enrolled in the Accademia del Disegno in 1576 before relocating to Rome i...