Titlepage to Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'

Art Historical Context

This elegant etching, created in 1606 by Antonio Tempesta and Pieter de Jode I, serves the title page for a printed edition of Ovid’s *Metamorphoses*. Measuring just over four by five inches, the small sheet demonstrates how prints could elegantly frame one of antiquity’s most influential literary works. Ovid’s collection of transformation myths had captivated readers since Roman times, and early modern publishers often commissioned artists to design inviting frontispieces that captured the poem’s themes of change, poetry, and the gods. Executed in the delicate lines of etching—a technique that allowed for fluid, expressive detail—Tempesta’s design likely incorporates allegorical profiles and poetic motifs referenced in the work’s tags. Such imagery helped readers immediately connect the ancient text with Renaissance ideals of learning and imagination. As a collaborative print, the sheet also illustrates the international exchange between Italian and Flemish artists that shaped illustrated books in the early seventeenth century. Today, this impression belongs to the Metropolitan Museum’s Drawings and Prints collection, acquired through the Elisha Whittelsey Fund. It offers visitors a glimpse into how visual art and literature intertwined to bring classical stories to new audiences.

About the Artist

Antonio Tempesta|Pieter de Jode I · 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...