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The Death of Hyacinth
(©
Museo Thyssen Bornemisza) |
The Death of
Hyacinth
In the painting Tiepolo,
the last great painter of the famous Venetian School, immortalised Ovid’s
mythological love affair between the God Apollo and the Spartan prince Hyacinth.
According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book X), a Latin poem exploring
change and transformation in the natural world, Apollo and Hyacinth are
practising their skills at discus throwing. Apollo hurled the discus with such
immense force that it accidentally struck Hyacinth, who was trying to retrieve
it. But we do not see a discus near Hyacinth’s body as it lies mortally wounded
in the foreground of Tiepolo’s impressive canvas. We do see an imposing
racket, three tennis balls and a drooping net in the middle, however. The
fatal ball by which Hyacinth was struck in the temple, lies prominently on
the tiled floor of the tennis court in the foreground. Why did Tiepolo
choose to transform Ovid’s ancient discus game between Apollo and Hyacinth, into
a passionate game of tennis between the two lovers?
Tiepolo’s German Patron
Tiepolo’s The Death
of Hyacinth
was commissioned in 1752 by Wilhelm Friedrich Schaumburg-Lippe. The
German count was a particularly keen tennis player. The painting’s genesis may
also be partly attributed to the death of Wilhelm’s grandfather in 1727, after
an exhausting game at the family’s tennis court (Ballhaus) of
their Bückeburg Castle. Another reason must have been the unfortunate
death of Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1751, having been hit by a tennis
ball.
The main motivation for
Tiepolo to include a tennis match between two lovers, however, is likely to have
been the death of Wilhelm’s intimate musician friend in Venice, who the count’s
father in a letter referred to as “your friend Apollo”. The two lovers must have
regularly played each other at tennis during Wilhelm’s frequent visits to
Venice. These examples of passionate aristocratic tennis play make clear that
Tiepolo had partly projected his The Death of Hyacinth painting to
reflect the renaissance the game of tennis experienced during the mid-eighteenth
century, a phenomenon particularly manifest in Venice.
But Tiepolo’s painting
should be mainly seen as an appropriate eulogy to the game of tennis at the
zenith of its popularity: in the second half of the sixteenth century the game
of pallacorda was the most popular physical exercise practised at court.
Tiepolo was clearly inspired by a Metamorphoses
translation, incorporating a long account of a tennis match, which came out
in 1561. It was a great publishing success and had several new editions in
Tiepolo’s time.
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Tiepolo's racket |
Anguillara’s Metamorfosi
By placing the leading physical exercise
practised at court in a classical setting, one notable humanist author in
particular tried to gain status for his work among secular and ecclesiastical
princes who had shown a preference for the game of tennis. Giovanni Andrea
dell’Anguillara’s Italian translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses can be
regarded as a striking testimony of the prestige the game of tennis generated in
mid-sixteenth century court circles.
Anguillara in Le Metamorfosi di
Ovidio di Gio (Venice 1561) had transformed Ovid’s original episode with
the ancient discus into a tennis game, employed to emphasise the game’s princely
status. He dedicated a long discourse to the vigorous racchetta
match between Apollo and Hyacinth and used a wide range of allegorical allusions
on how the game evolved. The humanist writers tried to outshine both their
contemporary rivals and the masters of Antiquity.
Anguillara’s introduction of a
racchetta match must have charmed the Renaissance princes he had served
during the ten years his Metamorfosi took to be completed. The
French Kings Henry II and Charles IX, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Duke
Cosimo I de’ Medici and Duke Alfonso II d’Este could all be counted
among the most passionate converts of the game.
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Charles IX of France, with racket
(1552, drawing
attributed to Jean Clouet) |
Anguillara’s Tennis Match
Anguillara starts his account with a
description of the racchetta court, with its black walls (so that the
white balls could be seen better during play), and galleries along two of its
walls. He proceeds by providing a vivid description of the action on court
(stanzas 77-85). The fatal accident occurs when Apollo swings his racket for a
decisive point and his ball hits Hyacinth in the temple (86). The next stanzas
reflect Apollo’s feelings of gran dolor, eventually culminating in the
dramatic transformation that is the Metamorphoses’ main theme:
transformation.
Tiepolo has truthfully copied the metamorphoses, as the
hyacinths next to the Spartan prince’s lifeless body are gradually turning
purple from the blood of the dying youth. But just as in Anguillara’s
Metamorfosi, another metamorphosis is emerging in Tiepolo’s representation:
the ill-fated scene of the accident, the tennis court – with its tiled floor
in the foreground, its characteristic penthouse and gallery on the left, the
slack net in the middle – is slowly being transformed into a large ivy-clad
garden, as if passed down from Antiquity. The parrot and Pan on the right
of Tiepolo’s painting, and the long-bearded, sombre-looking mythological
figures on the left, add a distinct moralising dimension to the forbidden
love affair as well as to the fun-filled games Apollo and Hyacinth were engaged
in.
Tiepolo’s representation of a sixteenth
century racchetta match between the Sun God Apollo and his Spartan prince
should thus be seen as the ultimate tribute to the game’s royal pedigree: The
Game of Kings, The King of Games. Besides Tiepolo has made another
significant contribution to the history of art. Next to the muscular Hyacinth,
the embodiment of the classical sportsman, lies the most beautifully-styled
tennis racket in the annals of the sport.
For the colour version of Tiepolo’s
The Death of Hyacinth, surf to Museo Thyssen Bornemisza virtual visit site:
www.museothyssen.org . The painting can be admired on the second floor, room
17.
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The
open tennis court at Madrid’s Buen Retiro Palace, visible just above the trees
in the foreground |
