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The Feast of the Gods or Banquet of the Gods as a subject in art showing a group of deities at table has a long history going back into antiquity. Showing Greco-Roman deities, it enjoyed a revival in popularity in the Italian Renaissance, and then in the Low Countries during the 16th century, when it was popular with Northern Mannerist painters, at least partly as an opportunity to show copious amounts of nudity.〔Bull, 342–343; Woolett, 60〕 Often the occasion shown was specifically either the wedding of Cupid and Psyche or that of Peleus and Thetis, but other works show other occasions, especially the ''Feast of Bacchus'', or a generalized feast. While the wedding of Cupid and Psyche is just the happy ending of Psyche's story, the wedding of Peleus and Thetis is part of the grand narrative of Greek mythology. The feast was interrupted by Eris, goddess of discord, who threw the golden Apple of Discord inscribed "for the most beautiful" into the company, provoking the argument that led to the Judgement of Paris, and ultimately to the Trojan War. Eris is sometimes shown in the air with the apple, or the apple with the diners, and sometimes the feast forms a background scene to a painting of the Judgement, or ''vice versa''.〔Bull, 343〕 This wedding was also used as a political symbol around the time of the marriage of the Dutch leader William the Silent to Charlotte of Bourbon in 1575.〔Bull, 343, citing P. Grootkerk's PhD, 1975〕 Generally, despite Thetis being a sea-nymph, depictions of her wedding have the same inland setting as other scenes. A depiction by Hans Rottenhammer (1600, Hermitage Museum) probably of the wedding of Neptune and Amphitrite is set in a beach-side pavilion, with the sea full of an unruly crowd of marine mythological creatures. The ''Feast of Achelous'' is derived from Ovid in his ''Metamorphoses'', who describes how Theseus is entertained by the river god in a damp grotto, while waiting for the river's raging flood to subside: "He entered the dark building, made of spongy pumice, and rough tuff. The floor was moist with soft moss, and the ceiling banded with freshwater mussel and oyster shells."〔Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'' VIII, 547ff〕 The subject was painted a number of times, with Rubens producing an early version with Jan Brueghel the Elder,〔Woollett, 60-63〕 and a later picture attributed to his "school", and Hendrick van Balen collaborating with Jan Brueghel the Younger. All show much smaller and more decorously behaved groups than the wedding parties. ==Italian Renaissance== One of the earliest depictions is a ''cassone'' panel by Bartolomeo di Giovanni from the 1490s (Louvre, ''illustrated''); this is paired with a panel of the ''Procession of Thetis'', another common way of depicting a wedding; artists were unsure what form an actual Olympian wedding ceremony might have taken. A more sophisticated but similar depiction of a rustic picnic eaten on the ground, is ''The Feast of the Gods'' by Giovanni Bellini (1514), later changed by Titian (to 1529), a large and important painting; both show the story of Priapus and Lotis.〔Bull, 342〕 Two major frescos from the end of the High Renaissance showed the wedding banquet of Cupid and Psyche: Raphael's central panel in the "Loggia of Psyche" at the Villa Farnesina in Rome, and Giulio Romano's wall panel in the Palazzo Te in Mantua. Both of these became very well-known through print versions, often freely adapting the compositions, and inspired a wide range of versions in drawings and media of the decorative arts such as majolica, painted Limoges enamel and pastiglia. Giulio's version seems to show the preparations rather than the feast itself, and only a few of the invited gods have so far arrived. But it is highly atmospheric and its dispersal of the figures across a large setting was to recur in many later depictions.〔 Both frescos showed a good proportion of the participants nude, or almost so, reflecting the practice of recent decades in mythological paintings. The ''Fête champêtre'' of Titian (or Giorgione) may represent a mythological subject, if not a feast then at least a picnic of the gods. Around the mid-century Taddeo Zuccari did the ''Wedding of Bacchus and Ariadne'' in fresco in the Villa Giulia, Rome,〔Vlieghe, 105〕 and in northern Europe Francesco Primaticcio painted that of Peleus and Thetis in a mythological series in the ballroom of the Palace of Fontainebleau.〔(Drawing of ''Apple of Discord Thrown by Eris at the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis'' ): Study for Fresco in the Hall of Henri II at Fountainebleau, Francesco Primaticcio, Metropolitan Museum of Art〕 Frans Floris painted a monumental feast in oil (c. 1550, Antwerp),〔Woolett, 60〕 nearly two metres across, as well as a ''Feast of the Seagods'' (1561, Stockholm). File:Farnesina Loggia di Psiche. 05.jpg|Raphael's panel in the "Loggia of Psyche" at the Villa Farnesina, Cupid and Psyche File:Banquet of Amor and Psyche by Giulio Romano.jpg|Giulio Romano, Palazzo Te, Mantua, Cupid and Psyche File:Banquet of the Gods - Frans Floris.png|Frans Floris, c. 1550, no specific occasion ==Northern Mannerism== The revival of interest in the subject some decades later in Northern Mannerism seems to spring from a large engraving of 1587 by Hendrik Goltzius in Haarlem of a drawing by Bartholomeus Spranger (now Rijksmuseum) that Karel van Mander had brought back from Prague, where Spranger was court painter to Rudolf II. ''The Feast of the Gods at the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche'' was so large, at 16 7/8 x 33 5/8 in. (43 x 85.4 cm), that it was printed from three different plates. Over 80 figures are shown, placed up in the clouds over a world landscape that can be glimpsed below. The composition borrows from both Raphael and Giulio Romano's versions.〔(The engraving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art ); (at the British Museum, in sections ); Bull, 342–343〕 Over the next thirty years or so a number of Netherlandish artists painted the subject, usually in small cabinet paintings, often on copper, although ''The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis'' by Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem was enormous at over four metres wide, a commission in 1593 from the Stadtholder Maurice, Prince of Orange for his palace, and Jacob Jordaens' ''The Golden Apple of Discord'' (1633, from an oil sketch by Rubens) is also a monumental treatment. Painters who returned to the subject several times include in particular Hendrick van Balen, who was known above all for these subjects, and also Joachim Wtewael, Cornelis van Haarlem, Cornelis van Poelenburch, and Abraham Bloemaert.〔Bull, 342–343; Slive, 13–14; Vlieghe, 105–106〕 Over the same period these same painters, later followed by Rubens, produced many depictions of ''Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus'' ("Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes", meaning that love needs food and wine to thrive), a proverb derived from the emblem books, which showed just Ceres, Bacchus, Venus and Cupid picnicking on the ground in most early versions, or seated at a table in some later ones.〔Bull, 218–219〕 It has been suggested that the concentration of images by the Haarlem Mannerists reflects the patronage of the powerful brewers of Haarlem.〔Santos, especially p. 21 onwards〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Feast of the Gods (art)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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