Correggio, Jupiter and Io, 1532-33, oil on canvas, 163.5 x 70.5 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:05] Hera, Zeus’s wife, was really jealous.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:09] And with very good reason. He was often fooling around.
Dr. Zucker: [0:12] He would take on disguises to help him get away with his escapades.
Dr. Harris: [0:16] To hide from Hera’s jealous gaze, one time he took the form of a swan, another time of an eagle.
Dr. Zucker: [0:24] And in this painting by Correggio, “Io and Jupiter,” he’s not becoming something else, so much as enveloping himself in a dark cloud, even though it’s bright daylight.
Dr. Harris: [0:34] Here he is embracing the beautiful nymph Io, and you could just make out his face in that fog and his hand embracing her.
Dr. Zucker: [0:43] It creates this wonderful sense of softness. Even though it’s just light, it’s just paint, we get this cottony, billowy cloud that surrounds him and envelops both of them.
Dr. Harris: [0:54] Correggio’s obviously looked at Leonardo and thought about sfumato and those kinds of softening of edges.
Dr. Zucker: [1:01] But when combined with his background as a Venetian painter, thinking about life, thinking about color, you get this tour de force.
Dr. Harris: [1:08] This was commissioned by Federico II, the Duke of Mantua, a member of the very powerful and wealthy Gonzaga family, for a room dedicated to the loves of Jupiter.
Dr. Zucker: [1:19] This is a subject that was quite famous because of the poetry of Ovid. Something that during the Renaissance was being revived. Ovid was a classical writer, an ancient Roman writer.
Dr. Harris: [1:28] This painting, along with its pendant, which is hanging next to it, of the abduction of Ganymede, were both gifts to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and paintings showing Zeus or Jupiter flattered the power of rulers like the Duke of Mantua and the Holy Roman Emperor.
Dr. Zucker: [1:48] Actually, it was the Holy Roman Emperor who had made that Gonzaga a duke. Let’s focus though on the painting of Jupiter and Io.
Dr. Harris: [1:56] We have a very vertical composition, and Io is seen from behind, tilting her head back. Look at her left arm embracing the mist, bringing it toward her.
Dr. Zucker: [2:07] Correggio has created light that seems to take on substance.
Dr. Harris: [2:11] The light is fabulous. Look at the dappled sunlight on her calf and the back of her heel, and then on the front of her foot and along her back and her arms. He’s really capturing the warmth. Look at the way that the sheet that’s under and behind her pours around her body.
Dr. Zucker: [2:29] But that feels so much more clarified and visually sharp compared to her flesh, which is even softer in contrast. You had mentioned the way in which she was giving herself up to him. She’s going to push her body up towards him on the balls of her feet.
Dr. Harris: [2:43] Right, that return of Jupiter’s embrace.
Dr. Zucker: [2:46] This is a painting that is over-the-top with its sensuality.
Dr. Harris: [2:49] It really is. She leans her head back. She opens her mouth. Her right hand, her fingers open up also, as though she’s taking him in. Her body almost melts downward. You can feel the next moment.
[3:04] Her flesh is so soft, and her skin is so porcelain-like and lovely. And I feel as though Correggio has offset that with this roots, moss, trees, mud, and the water below her, so that her flesh seems even more perfect.
Dr. Zucker: [3:24] So as she’s offset by the earthly, Zeus, or Jupiter, is offset by the brilliant sky above. You have this clarity and this notion of the heavens as opposed to her earthly sphere as a nymph.
Dr. Harris: [3:38] And you can see how Correggio is going to be very important for later Baroque artists. The way that Io gives herself up to a kind of ecstatic experience foreshadows what we’ll see with Bernini, for example, in “Saint Teresa in Ecstasy.”
Dr. Zucker: [3:54] There is this willingness to completely embrace emotion as opposed to the more intellectual pursuits of the Renaissance.
[4:01] [music]
