[In the following essay, Hoppe maintains that the illustrations included in Sandys's translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses were important not only for their artistry but also for exposing Baroque style to a larger audience.]

Of bodies chang'd to other shapes I sing.
Assist, you Gods (from you these changes spring
And, from the Worlds first fabrick to these times,
Deduced my never-discontinued Rymes.

These are the opening lines of George Sandys' Ovid's Metamorphosis englished, mythologiz'd and represented in figures. Dating from the seventeenth century, this translation of the Latin classic has received much attention for its literary value, but almost none has been paid to the engraved plates that were chosen to accompany the text. Each plate depicts a variety of vignettes from different tales related in the book of Ovid which follows. The complexity of the compositions and the multitude of figures challenges the reader to identify the images with the corresponding metamorphosis recounted in the text.

George Sandys traveled to Jamestown, in the Virginia Colony, in 1621 to become the resident treasurer of the colony. That same year he published The First Five Books of Ovid's Metamorphosis in England. Two more books were translated during the sea voyage, and the remaining eight books during his three year stay in the New World. Back in England, Sandys published his completed translation in 1626, with a dedication to King Charles I in which he calls his work “a double Stranger; Sprung from the Stocke of the ancient Romanes; but bred in the New-World, of the rudenesse whereof it cannot but participate; especially having Warres and Tumults to bring it to light in stead of the muses.”

In 1632 a luxurious illustrated folio edition of the entire translation of Ovid was published. Sandys had revised the text somewhat and added commentaries on each book, which take up as much or more room than the books themselves. He also added a translation of the first book of Virgil's Aeneid. A fine copy of this edition is in the Special Collections Department in the Library of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

The Metamorphoses were written by the great Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso in the time of Emperor Augustus and about the time of the birth of Christ. Beginning with the creation of order out of chaos, this epic poem relates over two hundred and fifty stories in fifteen books, ranging from the Greek myths and early Roman legends to the transformation of Julius Caesar into a star after his murder. The various stories are introduced and linked by clever devices that lead the reader from tale to tale without abrupt disruptions of the narrative flow.

The Sandys translation was not the first English version. In 1480, William Caxton published his translation, followed in 1567 by Arthur Golding's. The virtues of Sandys' text over its predecessors have been enumerated in several studies, that have been enough to establish the translator's place in the history of English verse.¹ Trained in a tradition of rhetoric, Sandys attempted to give the flavor of the style and manner of the Latin original. He wrote in heroic couplets, which were to become the standard medium for almost all poetry in the next century and a half. Sandys was regarded as a distinguished poet and a translator of elegance and integrity up until the nineteenth century. This work influenced such poets as Milton and Keats and is considered the “last great representative of the tradition of allegorized interpretation which began in the Middle Ages.”²

The engraved plates preceding each book and the frontispiece and author's portrait were designed by Franz Cleyn, a painter born in Rostock (now East Germany) in 1590/1600.³ He worked for a short time for Christian IV of Denmark and then spent four years in Rome. In 1625 Cleyn arrived in England to design tapestry subjects for James I at the Mortlake factory. Among his commissions were copies made after the great series of Raphael cartoons purchased by Charles, the Prince of Wales, and from which tapestries were made.⁴ Cleyn is also known for his ornamental border designs of grotesques.⁵ His printed works include designs made for Virgil and Aesop's Fables, both engraved by Wenceslas Hollar⁶ and for Divers Portraitures which were engraved by William Faithorne.⁷ Hodnett says Cleyn was the first artist in England to illustrate a considerable number of printed books.⁸ Cleyn died in London in 1658.

The handsome plates for Sandys' translation of Ovid were engraved by Salomon Savery, a Dutch engraver born in Amsterdam in 1594.⁹ Savery is known for portraits of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, John Speed, and Thomas, Lord Fairfax.¹⁰ Bryan says there is no proof Savery was ever in England,¹¹ though Hind felt that the fact that he engraved Cleyn's designs in 1632 probably means he was in England by then.¹² Only the title page and the illustration for book three are signed, but Hind says all are certainly by the same artist.¹³

The style of the illustrations is appropriately classicizing. The figures are well-muscled and graceful, showing a variety of contrapposto poses and theatrical gestures. Cleyn's years in Rome must have acquainted him with the works of Michelangelo and other Renaissance artists, and he would surely also have been familiar with the printed works of Mannerist artists like Goltzius and the Fontainebleau School. The major debt here, however, is surely to the Raphael cartoons of the Acts of the Apostles which Cleyn had copied for the royal tapestries. The cartoons had been in northern Europe from as early as 1517, when they were in Brussels for the weaving of the Vatican tapestries, so their influence had already permeated the northern schools. Cleyn did not directly quote Raphael's figures and poses, but adaptations of types are discernible. The architecture found in the Ovid plates may also derive from these models.

Cleyn's illustrations for Sandys' translation depict moments of significant dramatic action from many tales, each presenting the viewer with the necessary elements to identify the source of the imagery. He is noted for the same effective use of the dramatic instant in his works for Virgil and for Aesop's Fables.¹⁴ The complexity of the compositions was probably dictated by the complexity of the text itself. Cleyn, or Sandys,¹⁵ must have wanted to capture some of the spirit of the author's manipulation of the vast amount of tales, and to duplicate Ovid's ability to weave together into a continuous narrative flow such diverse materials. Though not always successful, these rich images are carefully planned, and exhibit an exuberant approach to illustration which dazzles the viewer with its audacity.

Each of the fifteen plates reveals a separate landscape setting for that book of Ovid. There is a foreground plane, usually on the right side, which is elevated above the middle ground. The view extends back to a great distance with a high horizon. Scattered throughout the scene are various figures reenacting events from the tales of the transformations. These tend to follow the order of the book, moving from foreground to the far distance. By a careful reading of the text it is possible to solve the puzzle of each engraved plate, an exercise that is both challenging and entertaining.

The illustration for book one begins in the lower right with the creation of man by Prometheus, who fashions him from the earth and rainwater in the image of the gods. At the top of the rock a cluster of muscular giants brandish their weapons against the gods, who are seen descending through the heavens to the attack. To the left is a temple on whose steps appear Jupiter and his eagle. Fleeing from Jupiter's wrath, Lycaon has been changed to a wolf for daring to serve the king of the gods boiled and roasted limbs of a hostage. Lycaon's house is burned just behind.

Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha are shown in the middle ground pulling veils over their heads and loosening their tunics as they throw stones behind them. The stones begin to turn into the men and women of a new race to populate the earth after the flood. Their faces are just distinguishable. Directly behind the stones lies a dragon-like beast with an arrow in its head. This is the Python killed by Apollo. The god himself is seen chasing Daphne, who is changed into a laurel just as he reaches her.

To the left of Daphne's branches, the myth of Mercury and Argus is illustrated. This refers to the story of Io, whom Jupiter changed into a cow to hide her from his jealous wife Juno. Juno set her henchman, Argus of the hundred eyes, to watch the cow, while Jupiter sent Mercury to rescue her. The wily Mercury began to tell Argus the tale of Pan and Syrinx: of how Pan chased the nymph and she was transformed to reeds in his hands. To honor her, Pan made the first reed pipes. Mercury is depicted lulling Argus to sleep with the pipes, while just above appears the tale of Pan and Syrinx. After Mercury slew Argus, Juno took his hundred eyes and put them on the feathers of her own bird, the peacock, which is shown in the sky above.

The remainder of the plates follow the same basic pattern. The significance of the illustrations to later artists can be seen in another volume owned by Special Collections—Ovid's “Metamorphoses” in Fifteen Books. Translated by the most Eminent Hands. Adorn'd with Sculptures., complied by S. Garth and printed by Jacob Tonson in London in 1717. This is the first edition of a version of Ovid's text that would go through a dozen more editions in the next hundred years. Garth's compilation was built around a core of translations by Dryden, with eighteen other contributors. It became the standard version for English schools until the twentieth century.¹⁶

The illustrations were engraved by various artists, the most prominent of whom were Elias Kirkhall and Michael van der Gucht, after designs by Louis Cheron and Louis de Guernier.¹⁷ That the designers knew Cleyn's versions is highly probable. Their compositions are more involved than Cleyn's, with even more incidents shown in many cases but they lack the spontaneity of the earlier images and are not as satisfying as a whole.

George Sandys' translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses has stood up well to the test of time. A Renaissance adventurer, scholar and poet, Sandys exemplified the literary aspirations of his era in England. The illustrations that were included with his translation are important not only for the intricacy of their iconographical schemes but also for the dissemination of classicizing Baroque style to a large audience. Franz Cleyn was part of a generation of emigrants who settled in England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These artists dominated English artistic production well into the latter part of the seventeenth century and, as the names of those associated with the Garth compilation attest, continued to be a driving force into the eighteenth century.

Notes

1. See G. Sandys, Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologized and Represented in Figures, ed. K. D. Hulley and S. T. Vandersall, with a Foreword by D. Bush (Lincoln, 1970); D. Rubin, Ovid's Metamorphoses Englished: George Sandys as Translator and Mythographer (New York, 1985); L. T. Pearcy, The Meditated Muse: English Translations of Ovid, 1560-1700 (Hamden, 1984); and C. Grose, Ovid's Metamorphoses: An Index to the 1632 Commentary of George Sandys (Malibu, 1981).

2. R. B. Davis, George Sandys: Poet Adventurer (New York, 1955), p. 208.

3. U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler (Leipzig, 1907-50), VII, p. 104; M. Bryan, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (London, 1913), I, p. 302; and E. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain: 1530 to 1790 (Baltimore, 1953), p. 40.

4. J. Shearman, Raphael's Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (London, 1972), p. 147. Also, W. Myson, “Notes on British Painting from Archives: II,” Burlington Magazine, XCVII, 1955, p. 120.

5. Thieme-Becker, Künstler Lexikon, VII, p. 104.

6. Bryan, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, p. 302.

7. R. Godfrey, Printmaking in Britain (New York, 1978), p. 26.

8. E. Hodnett, Image & Text (Hampshire, 1986), p. 46.

9. A. M. Hind, Engraving in England (Cambridge, 1964), III, p. 220; J. Strutt, A Biographical Dictionary of all the Engravers (London, 1785-86; reprint Geneva, 1972), 1, p. 4; and Bryan, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, 5, p. 27.

10. Bryan, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, V, p. 27.

11. Ibid.

12. Hind, Engraving, p. 220.

13. Ibid.; this is also supported by Strutt, Biographical Dictionary, I, p. 5.

14. E. W. Leach, “Brandt & Dryden's Editions of Vergil,” The Early Illustrated Book: Essays in Honor of Lessing J. Rosenwald (Washington, 1982), p. 191.

15. In a prologue to his readers, Sandys stated, “And for thy farther delight I have contracted the substance of every Booke into as many Figures (by the hand of a rare Workman, and as rarely performed, if our judgements may be led by theirs, who are masters among us in that Faculty) …”

16. Pearcy, Meditated Muse, p. 143.

17. Hodnett, Image & Text, p. 46; and H. Hammelmann and T. S. R. Boase, Book Illustration of the 18th Century in England (New Haven, 1975), p. 25.