In this Research and Academic Program lecture, Jesús Muñoz Morcillo (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology / Michael Ann Holly Fellow) discusses Peter Paul Rubens’s use of Dionysian and materialistic traditions, focusing on their connection to nature and their impact on environmental depictions. It has been said that Rubens’s visual references to Dionysian motifs are related to his stay in Rome in the years 1600 to 1608. However, Rubens’s compositions of wet, wild, and vibrant environments surrounding Bacchic scenes transcend visual references to plastic archetypes. Indeed, Rubens seems to draw on specific ancient sources, including not only Dionysian descriptions found in authors such as Euripides, Propertius, or Nonnos of Panopolis but also Epicurean natural philosophy. An ecocritical comparison of Rubens’s Bacchic motifs with landscape paintings aims to elucidate whether his "entanglements" of myth and nature may have stood closer to a materialistic tradition rather than a stoic awareness of the natural world, as frequently assumed.
A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event.
Image: Peter Paul Rubens, Dance of Mythological Figures and Villagers (1635), oil on panel, Museo del Prado, Inv. P001691. Photo: Museo del Prado
In this Research and Academic Program lecture, Jesús Muñoz Morcillo (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology / Michael Ann Holly Fellow) discusses Peter Paul Rubens’s use of Dionysian and materialistic traditions, focusing on their connection to nature and their impact on environmental depictions. It has been said that Rubens’s visual references to Dionysian motifs are related to his stay in Rome in the years 1600 to 1608. However, Rubens’s compositions of wet, wild, and vibrant environments surrounding Bacchic scenes transcend visual references to plastic archetypes. Indeed, Rubens seems to draw on specific ancient sources, including not only Dionysian descriptions found in authors such as Euripides, Propertius, or Nonnos of Panopolis but also Epicurean natural philosophy. An ecocritical comparison of Rubens’s Bacchic motifs with landscape paintings aims to elucidate whether his "entanglements" of myth and nature may have stood closer to a materialistic tradition rather than a stoic awareness of the natural world, as frequently assumed.
A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event.
Image: Peter Paul Rubens, Dance of Mythological Figures and Villagers (1635), oil on panel, Museo del Prado, Inv. P001691. Photo: Museo del Prado
