Piero Di Cosimo Jason and Queen Hypsipyle with the Women of Lemnos, 1499 Oil and tempera on panel: 35 1/8 x 58 1/2 This work, an important recent discovery, depicts the landing of Jason and his fellow Argonauts on the island of Lemnos, whose male population had recently been decimated. Illustrating a passage in the third-century B.C. epic, the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (whose Greek text was published in Florence in 1496), it is a unique representation. Intended as part of the wainscotting of a patrician home (presumably a hall or bedroom), and to be viewed at shoulder height (thus this type of picture’s name in Italian, spalliera), it was originally accompanied by two other paintings on canvas by Piero di Cosimo: the Finding of Vulcan on Lemnos (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford) and the Return of Life to Lemnos (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa). |