Set of painted wooden panels. (Painted ceilings) Polychromy in ocher-blue tones representing in the center of the first set Artemis with bare chest, the goddess of wild nature, hunting and the Moon and holding in her arms a winged cherub with a horn of plenty framed in floral elements and architectural trompe l’oeil.
On the second set in the center is a bust of Apollo god of the arts and the sun who is the twin brother of Artemis, friendly heads of the sun and the moon smiling in the skylights. Artemis is a goddess associated with the Moon as opposed to her brother Apollo who is associated with the sun. The whole is decorated with trompe l’oeil floral and architectural elements (balusters, velvets, rockeries).
The identification of Apollo with the sun does not appear in any source before the 5th century BC. BC the first attested mention dates back to Euripides in a fragment of the lost tragedy Phaeton… It met with great success among poets, an environment where the name “Apollo” is often used, by metonymy to designate the sun . We find little echo of it in the cult of Apollo.
Apollo Sun, like Artemis Moon, moved away from their primitive character as wild gods by joining the cosmic sphere of religion.
Height: 190 cm; width: 300 cm
17th century
Italy
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