Ovidian Influences and Figural Obsessions in Michelangelo’s Fall of Phaethon Drawings

Abstract

MICHELANGELO ’S MEETING WITH TOMMASO DE ’ CAVALIERI during the winter of 1532 sparked new levels of creativity: the artist presented Tommaso with a number of exquisitely finished drawings and some of his most refined poems. The Punishment of Tityus, The Rape of Ganymede, and the three versions of The Fall of Phaethon are derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The Phaethon drawings have attracted the greatest amount of critical attention: thismyth is the only one to elicit three different versions, three narrative scenes, as well as a series of notes betweenMichelangelo and Tommaso.While scholars have notedMichelangelo’s incorporation of narrative details derived from Ovid in the drawings, scant attention has been paid to the influence exerted by the Roman poet’s hypercharged rhetoric.