This week’s My Poetic Side news round up takes a look at the exhibition inspired by Ovid’s most famous work and also the death of the Dutch poet and writer Cees Nooteboom at the age of 92.
Rijksmuseum puts Spotlight on Metamorphoses
The 15-book epic, Metamorphoses, by the Roman poet Ovid will be part of an exhibition taking place at Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Metamorphoses, which was written over 2000 years ago, chronicles the history of the world, and has been a source of inspiration for countless artists.
The exhibition will also be featuring work by a number of other greats including Titian, Caravaggio, Rodin, Bernini, Brancusi, Bourgeois and Zadkine, and will be the biggest exhibition that has ever been devoted to works of art inspired by Ovid’s most famous work.
Metamorphoses has been a source for Greek, Roman and modern era literary works, paintings, and statues. The exhibition will bring together more than 80 of these from over 50 museums from all over the world. They have been assembled with assistance from the Borghese gallery, which is in Rome, just for this exhibition. The organisers are hoping that the passion, lust, desire, jealousy, and cunning of the work will be revealed through the exhibition.
Whilst Metamorphoses is often found to be impenetrable by the modern reader it is still a significant source of inspiration for artists even today, the figure of Medusa for example can be seen throughout the exhibition in a series of different works which date from the 16th to the 21st centuries. The different forms of Medusa have been included in the exhibition to show how each generation has taken motifs from the work of Ovid and used it to create their own take.
The exhibition will be taking place until 25th May at Rijksmuseum and will then transfer to the Borghese gallery.
Cees Nooteboom, Dutch Author and Poet Dies Aged 92
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The Dutch poet and writer Cees Nooteboom died at the age of 92 earlier this week. He was regarded not only as an important literary voice in his home country but also across Europe and particularly in Germany.
His debut work was the novel Philip and the Others (Philip en de Anderen). He was a prolific travel writer as well, writing for a number of different travel publications. He provides insights into both the culture and history in his bestselling work Roads to Santiago (De Omweg naar Santiago). It was however Rituals (Rituelen) which was written in 1980 which was his breakthrough, earning him an F. Brodewijk award and also an American Pegasus award. In 1989 the book was made into a film.
Nooteboom’s work has been translated into over 30 languages, and he received a P. C. Hooft award in 2009.
He lived the last years of his life on Menorca, a place that he not only loved but also wrote about in his most recent book Het Spaanse van Spanje, which was published in 2023.
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