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Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · Hover to magnify, click for fullscreen
Original fileIn the center, the mourning sisters are shown in various stages of transformation, with bark growing over their limbs and leaves sprouting from their hands and heads. Their mother, Clymene, desperately tries to strip the bark away, while in the lower right, Cygnus is seen turning into a swan by the banks of the river Eridanus. The background features the tomb of Phaethon, whose fatal fall from the chariot of the sun necessitated this divine intervention.
This scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses was frequently interpreted in the Renaissance as a Neoplatonic allegory for the soul's transition between different states of being and the consequences of spiritual hubris. Hendrick Goltzius, a key figure in the Haarlem Mannerist circle, produced this series during a period when Ovidian myths were being systematically decoded for their hidden natural and moral philosophies by scholars and esotericists alike.
Excipit Eridanus Phaëtonta tepentibus undis Fulmineo excussum caelitus igne Iouis. Deplorant tumulum Clymene, Heliadesq. sorores, Quas Dy populaea fronde repente tegunt.
Translation
Eridanus receives Phaethon in its tepid waters, Shaken from the heavens by the lightning fire of Jove. Clymene and the Heliades, his sisters, mourn the tomb, Whom the god suddenly covers with poplar leaves.
Ovid
The print is a direct illustration of Book II of the Metamorphoses, a text central to Renaissance understandings of natural change and cosmic order.
Object
Engraving
mythological
Digital Source
Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Image: http://collections.lacma.org/sites/default/files/remote_images/piction/ma-31875385-O3.jpg Gallery: http://collections.lacma.org/node/688269 archive copy at the Wayback Machine
Public domain
2100 × 1460 px
366f3530cdec22b028d7fc627679d96e5c9abd08
July 20, 2013
March 23, 2026
Linked Data
AI AI-cataloged fields generated by gemini-3-flash-preview on April 1, 2026. Getty identifiers are AI-inferred and may require verification.