Ganymede as a young boy riding a large eagle (Zeus) in flight above a landscape

?After Andrea Mantegna Italian
ca. 1500–1505
Not on view
The extreme youth of the boy depicted by Campagnola, together with his willing participation in his abduction by Jupiter in the guise of an eagle, suggests that a Neoplatonic reading of the myth may be intended. Beginning with the moralized versions of the Metamorphoses in the fourteenth century, the ravishment came to be interpreted as the union of the soul with God.
The engraving may have been based on a pen study in the collection of Andrede Hanesy, Paris, probably by Mantegna (see The Illustrated Bartsch XXV.2518.372). The landscape is copied from Albrecht Durer's engraving 'Virgin and Child with a Monkey' (c.1498).

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Ganymede as a young boy riding a large eagle (Zeus) in flight above a landscape
  • Artist: Giulio Campagnola (Italian, Padua ca. 1482–ca. 1515/18 Venice)
  • Artist: ?After Andrea Mantegna (Italian, Isola di Carturo 1430/31–1506 Mantua)
  • Date: ca. 1500–1505
  • Medium: Engraving
  • Dimensions: Sheet: 6 7/8 × 5 1/16 in. (17.5 × 12.8 cm)
    Plate: 6 5/8 × 4 13/16 in. (16.9 × 12.2 cm)
  • Classification: Prints
  • Credit Line: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1937
  • Object Number: 37.3.10
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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