Collection

1470 ARIADNE

Description
‘The Florentine Picture-Chronicle’ page from the album (recto of 1889,0527.44): the Cretan labyrinth in the foreground, to the right Ariadne signalling from the cliffs on Naxos, her attempted suicide and subsequent rescue by Jupiter or Jove, the scene continued from the left-hand page of the opening (1889,0527.42)
Pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk

Producer name
Circle/School of: Maso Finiguerra
Circle/School of: Baccio Baldini

Inscriptions
Inscription type: inscription
Inscription content: Numbered indistinctly top right, the labyrinth labelled: “AbERINTO/ TESEUS” and the same figure identified: “GIOVE” (twice), the page numbered top right: “30”
Curator’s comments
Watermark: Cardinal’s hat

The double-page opening combines a number of episodes from the life of Theseus. On the left he is shown standing in front of the entrance to the Cretan labyrinth where the fearsome (but in the drawing unseen) half-man, half-bull monster, the Minotaur, lives. The Cretan King Minos depicted on the following page kept this creature fed with human flesh by demanding a tithe of seven young men and women by sent annually from Athens. Theseus volunteered to be included in this group. In the drawing Theseus holds one of the balls of wool given to him by Ariadne, the daughter of the Cretan king Minos, that will help find his way back through the maze after he has slain the Minotaur. Another ball of wall lies on the ground to the right already attached to a hook by the entrance. Before his departure to Crete, Theseus had promised his father Aegeus that he would instruct his crew to show whether he had survived his fight with the Minotaur by either having black sails, signifying his death, or white ones. He forgot to make this change as the ship approached Athens and as a result his father, thinking he had been killed, threw himself to his death into the sea.

The right-hand page is dominated by the labyrinth. To the right Ariadne whose love for Theseus has led her to help him escape from the layrinth is shown on the island of Naxos. She has been abandoned there by Theseus who ignores her signalling to his boat by means of a scarf attached to a stick. In despair at her lover’s cruelty she jumps into the sea but is rescued by Jove or Jupiter who takes her heavenwards.

A related Baccio Baldini or School engraving of the same subject is in the BM: 1845,0825.487

BRITISH MUSEUM