Jupiter and Mercury reveal themselves to Philemon and Baucis

Jupiter and Mercury reveal themselves to Philemon and Baucis

Elie-Honoré Montagny

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing depicts the story of Baucis and Philemon, which is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VIII,611). Its central theme is the virtue of hospitality. Jupiter and Mercury—in disguise—are turned away from every house in the village before the elderly couple invite them in and offer to share their meager meal. Montagny does not show the gods in disguise, but illustrates instead the moment when the divinity of the guests is revealed to the couple. Upon their death, they were transformed into a pair of intertwined trees: one oak and one linden. Elie Honoré Montagny was a student of Jacques Louis David. He resided in Naples from 1804 to 1815 and it is to this period that his most famour works can be dated. A related painting, with a number of differences in the composition, is in the Palazzo Reale, Caserta, a palace near Naples.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jupiter and Mercury reveal themselves to Philemon and BaucisJupiter and Mercury reveal themselves to Philemon and BaucisJupiter and Mercury reveal themselves to Philemon and BaucisJupiter and Mercury reveal themselves to Philemon and BaucisJupiter and Mercury reveal themselves to Philemon and Baucis

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.