Plate 23: Cadmus Killing the Serpent (Draco a Cadmo interficitur), from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'
1606
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet: 4 in. × 4 1/2 in. (10.2 × 11.5 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
51.501.3874
Tags
Art Historical Context
This etching by Antonio Tempesta captures a dramatic moment from Ovid’s *Metamorphoses*: the hero Cadmus slaying the fearsome serpent guarding the spring of Ares. Created in 1606 as Plate 23 in a printed series, the small sheet (just 4 by 4½ inches) condenses the ancient tale into a dynamic composition, with the coiled dragon and determined warrior filling the frame. Tempesta, an Italian printmaker active during the transition from Mannerism to the Baroque, specialized in such narrative cycles that brought classical myths to a wide audience through affordable, reproducible images. Etching all...
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...