Scene from the Metamorphoses
by BRAMER, Leonaert, Watercolour and gouache on vellum, 140 x 195 mm
This late drawing by Bramer illustrate an episode from Metamorphoses by Ovid. It depicts the scene Perseus, with the Head of Medusa, Turns Phineus to Stone.
The Metamorphoses was enormously popular in the Netherlands during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Bramer made two series of drawings devoted to Ovidian subjects, one with brush and black ink in about 1635-45, and one with colour in the 1660s.