Plate 125: Aurora Asking Jupiter to Honor Memnon (Aurora a Iove Memnoni, mortis honorem petit), from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'
1606
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet: 4 in. × 4 5/8 in. (10.2 × 11.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951
Accession Number
51.501.3976
Tags
Art Historical Context
In Plate 125 from Antonio Tempesta's renowned 1606 series of 138 etchings illustrating Ovid's *Metamorphoses*, the dawn goddess Aurora kneels before Jupiter, pleading for him to honor her son Mem, the Ethiopian king slain by Achilles during the Trojan War. This moment captures a pivotal episode from Book 13, where Jupiter responds by sending flocks of birds that clash in aerial combat, their fallen feathers forming a lasting memorial. Tempesta, a prolific Italian artist of the late Mannerist and early Baroque periods, masterfully distilled classical mythology into dynamic, narrative-driven pri...
About the Artist
Antonio Tempesta · 1555–1630
Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630), known as 'Il Tempestino,' was a Florentine painter and printmaker whose extraordinary output of approximately 1,700 etchings made him one of the most influential printmakers of the early Baroque period. Born in Florence and trained under Santi di Tito and the Flemish master Joannes Stradanus, he enrolled in the Accademia del Disegno in 1576 before relocating to Rome i...