Description:
mythology; outdoor; landscape; vegetation

Label Text:
Giulio Cesare Procaccini, a painter from a family of artists in Milan, combined elements of the Mannerist style of the sixteenth century—which featured elegant, elongated figures, shallow pictorial space, and non-naturalistic colors—with the monumentality and dynamism of art from the Baroque period.

A sculptor before he turned to painting around 1600, Procaccini painted mostly Christian subjects. This canvas, however, draws its subject from Greek mythology. The sun god Apollo, dressed in swirling crimson robes and holding a lyre in the crook of his left arm, is shown with Minerva, goddess of war and wisdom. She grasps a helmet and sword in her left hand while offering an open book to Apollo in her right. He accepts the book, symbolizing wisdom, while declining the implements of war.

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/test/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1997.3.2

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