The Afterlife of Ovid ~ Conference Videos!
Last weekend, the Warburg Institute and the Institute for Classical Studies hosted a conference called The Afterlife of Ovid and a number of videos from the meeting have made it to Youtube. I’m going to sort of intersperse an ‘edited program’ with the videos (not all talks are there … not sure if they will be coming later today or what):
Thursday 7 March 2013
10. 50 Welcome: John North (IClS)
11.00 Professor Frank Coulson (Ohio State University)
Bernardo Moretti: A Newly Discovered Humanist Commentator on Ovid’s Ibis
11.50 Dr Ingo Gildenhard (University of Cambridge)
Dante’s Ovidian Poetics
1.50 Professor Gesine Manuwald (University College London)
Letter-writing after Ovid: his impact on Neo-Latin verse epistles
2.40 Professor Hélène Casanova-Robin (Université Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV)
D’Ovide à Pontano : le mythe, une forma mentis? De l’inuentio mythologique à l’élaboration d’un idéal d’humanitas
4.00 Dr Fátima Díez-Platas (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela)
Et per omnia saecula imagine vivam: The imaged afterlife of Ovid in fifteenth and sixteenth century book illustrations
4.50 Dr Caroline Stark (Ohio Wesleyan University)
Reflections of Narcissus
Friday 8 March 2013
10.30 Professor John Miller (University of Virginia)
‘Ovid’s Janus and the Start of the Year in Renaissance Fasti Sacri.
11.20 Professor Philip Hardie (University of Cambridge)
Milton as Reader of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
12.10 Dr Victoria Moul (King’s College London)
The transformation of Ovid in Cowley’s herb garden: Books 1 and 2 of the Plantarum Libri Sex (1668).
2.00 Professor Maggie Kilgour (McGill University)
Translatio Studii, Translatio Ovidii
2.50 Professor Hérica Valladares (John Hopkins University)
The Io in Correggio: Ovid and the Metamorphosis of a Renaissance Painter
4.10 Professor Elizabeth McGrath (Warburg Institute)
Rubens and Ovid
Note in passing: this is a pretty good model for recording a conference or panel session although it might be useful if handouts were posted at the original conference website.
“Ovid’s” Niobe Statues Found
Tip o’ the pileus to Martin Conde, who alerted us to a story in la Reppublica relating the discovery of the villa of Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus — Ovid’s patron — and statuary from the Niobe story which is being connected to Ovid. I managed to track down an English summary in Gazzetta del Sud:
Archaeologists say they’ve uncovered an “exceptional” group of sculptures dating to the 1st century BC in a villa in Rome’s suburb of Ciampino. The sculptures, found in an ancient villa owned by Roman general Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, a patron of the poet Ovid, tell the myth of Niobe, the proud daughter of Tantalus who lost all her 14 children after boasting to the mother of Apollo and Artemis, Leto, about her fertility. Niobe, regarded as a classic example of the retribution caused by the sin of pride or hubris, was turned to stone. Excavations at the villa have also revealed a thermal bath area with fragments of artistic mosaics and a swimming pool as long as 20 meters with walls painted blue. Inside the bath area were found seven sculptures dating to the Augustan age, as well as a complete series of fragments that experts say can be reassembled. The group tells the story of Niobe, which figured in Ovid’s epic poem of transformation, the Metamorphoses, published in AD 8. La Repubblica newspaper said Tuesday a team of archaeologists made the valuable discovery last summer. “Statues of Niobe have been found in the past, but in the case of Ciampino, we have a good part of the group,” of statues, said Elena Calandra, superintendent of archaeological heritage. According to their reconstruction of the bath area, experts say the statues were carved on all four sides of the swimming pool, which may have been buried by an earthquake in the 2nd century AD.
- via: Archaeologists discover Augustan-era sculptures near Rome (Gazzetta del Sud)
It’s worth checking out Martin Conde’s flickr page of the La Reppublica coverage, which includes photos and a somewhat different spin on the story (which seems to be yet another major conservation kerfuffle in Italy): ROMA / LAZIO ARCHEOLOGIA: Roma, ecco le statue che Ovidio cantò nelle Metamorfosi Scoperta la villa di Messalla, LA REPUBBLICA (08/01/2013), pp. 1 & 23. If you need a quick refresher on the story of Niobe, here’s a translation of the relevant section of the Metamorphoses (6.146 ff) …
ADDENDUM (a couple hours later): See also Dorothy King’s post for further coverage and a whack of photos: New Niobids – New Light on a Old Group
Other coverage:
- ‘Exceptional’ find of Roman statues linked to poet Ovid (BBC)
- Statues linked to poet Ovid found near Rome (Daily Star)
- Archaeologists discover Augustan-era sculptures near Rome (ANSA)
- Ritrovata la villa del mecenate di Ovidio (ANSA)
- Seven statues linked to Ovid unearthed near Rome (Times)
- Seven ancient Roman statues linked to Latin poet Ovid unearthed near the Italian capital (Art Daily)
