Description
Inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, this key painting in Reni's oeuvre tells the story of Atalanta, the daughter of Schoeneus, king of Arcadia.
Seeking a husband, she offered to marry anyone who could outdo her in a race. Suitors who were unable to do so, however, would be killed. Hippomenes was in love with her and so he accepted the challenge with the help of Venus, who gave him three golden apples. She was supposed to drop them, one at a time, to distract Atalanta and thus win the race. Later they made love in a Cibeles temple, which offended the goddess so much that she turned them both into lions.
Atalanta stops three times to pick the apples, and Hippomenes wins the race. Instead of targeting the dynamics of the race, Guido Reni chooses to represent it by focusing on the intersection of the luminous bodies of the two opponents, with the blue-brown background of the ground and the sky. Their soft and perfect bodies fit into a game of gestures and responses, as fluid as the choreography.
This work sums up the classical interpretation of ideal beauty, elegantly proportioned, characteristic of Roman and Bolognese classicism. The colors are cold and artificial, and only the dark, neutral background is reminiscent of Reni's early training in the style of Caravaggio. This painting belonged to the Marquis of Serra and was acquired in 1664 by the Count of Peñaranda for King Felipe IV (1605-1665). Another version, of lower quality, is in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples.
In the Boeotian version of the legend, followed by Ovid (Met. 10:560-707), Atalanta was an athletic huntress. Her way with her suitors was to challenge them to a race in which the loser was punished by death. She remained undefeated and a virgin until Hippomenes (elsewhere called Melanion) hired her.
The image shows Atalanta in the act of bending down to pick up one of the apples as Hippomenes reaches for her.
There are two versions of this pain, one in Naples and one in Madrid, and there have recently been heated debates about both its autography and its dating.