The Challenge of the Pierides, from Ovids Metamorphosis (B

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Karel Van Mander is best known as the author of the first collection of biographies of Netherlandish artists, Het Schilder-Boeck (The Book on Painting), but he was also a highly skilled and wonderfully imaginative draftsman. This recently discovered drawing depicts a story told in book V of Ovid's Metamorphoses (verses 294-678) in which the nine daughters of King Pierus are turned into magpies after losing the singing contest to which they challenged the nine Muses. The scene is set at one of the sacred sources on Mount Helicon or Mount Parnassus. Probably following the example of a print after Rosso Fiorentino, Van Mander seems to have cast Apollo as the final judge. This drawing and two similar sheets by Van Mander at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, may have been meant as the continuation of an elaborate but aborted series of print illustrations of the Metamorphoses by Van Mander's great contemporary and friend Hendrick Goltzius, for which one of the drawn models is shown at left. Goltzius in turn must have been incited to work on the series by Van Mander's interest in Ovid's book. Van Mander's commentary on the Metamorphoses is part of Het Schilder-Boeck; a first edition copy is shown in the vitrine nearby.

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