Artistic Analysis Essay

     Diluvium by Antonio Tempesta uses suffering to humanize the victims of Ovid’s flood story, criticizing its cruelty with a foreign lens. Painted in 1606, Diluvium depicts the flood Ovid describes in book one of The Metamorphoses. Its title, meaning “deluge”, makes it explicitly clear this work is aspiring to capture Ovid’s description of Jove’s flood. This reading is further justified by the elements it shares with Ovid’s story, including drowning cows, a man seated on a hill, and men in boats. It comes from a set of 150 prints rendering scenes from Ovid’s stories, many of which were used as illustrations in copies of The Metamorphoses.

     Antonio Tempesta’s personal history informed his reading of The Flood. Born in Florence in 1555, Tempesta moved to Rome around 1580 to pursue art. This gave him a unique, foreign perspective on traditional Roman stories. Classical Roman tales like Ovid’s Metamorphoses portray the gods as unquestionable, omnipotent beings, and this is no more clear than in the story of Arachne. Athena, after losing a weaving competition, turns her competitor into a spider. The moral of Ovid’s telling of this story is that mortals should never question gods. Growing up outside Rome, Tempesta would have never received this lesson; he instead grew up with the stories of the New Testament which describe a benevolent, well-mannered God. Tempesta likely drew critical conclusions about the decisions of Ovid’s gods which only his foreign perspective allowed, since he would have a unique expectation for gods to be merciful.

     Diluvium is critical of Ovid’s flood story and the justifications behind it. In The Metamorphoses, Ovid draws the conclusion that the flood was the fault of the humans for their aggressive nature. He doesn’t dwell on the suffering the flood caused, nor on the reasoning behind it. Tempesta’s work does just that; it critiques Jove’s purge by humanizing its victims. For example, Tempesta adds a mother and her child to his work. These characters were not found in Ovid's original story, and their attitude draws attention to the injustice of Jove’s flood. The mother, praying, has a pitiable look on her as she shouts upward. Her child grabs her dress, looking for comfort. Other additions further ground Tempesta’s depiction of this story in its casualties, like a drowned body in the water or men trying to save people in vain. Even the medium of print furthers Tempesta’s agenda, since it allows more tragic detail than poetry. Tempesta chooses to omit details from Ovid’s story which may draw away from his message. For example, The Metamorphoses describes wondrous sunken cities which impress even the Nereids. These are nowhere to be found in Tempesta’s print because they would take interest away from the ugliness of the Flood, impressing viewers. By showing the impacts of the flood, Tempesta critiques Jove’s decision; instead of dwelling on the reasons for the flood, Tempesta emphasizes the flood’s victims, focusing on its downsides and demonstrating that Jove’s culling was unjust.