The Fall of the Titans

1588 · Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

religious

The Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses relate the story of a reigning race of gods consisting of the titans, the cyclopes, and the giants who were challenged to a cosmic battle by the Olympian gods headed by Zeus. The fierce battle, the so-called titanomachia, ended with the defeat of the titans whom Zeus cast down into Tartaros, the underworld, from where they cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

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About the Artist

Cornelis Van Haarlem

1562 – 1638

Dutch painter, also known as Cornelis Cornelisz, who ranks with Hendrik Goltzius and Karel van Mander as one of the leading representatives of Mannerism in the Netherlands. The three artists founded the Haarlem Academy, which was a school for drawing from the nude. He is best known for his large biblical and historical pictures packed with athletic, life-size Italianate nudes in wrenched and sharply foreshortened positions. But he also did a few forceful portraits of individuals and groups which show that he was an important forerunner of Frans Hals. Both facets of his work can best be seen in the Frans Halsmuseum in Haarlem, where he spent most of his life, after traveling in France and the Netherlands, but not, apparently, in Italy.

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