Domenico Beccafumi
Deucalion and Pyrrha, c. 1520, oil on panel
The work, to be identified as the first purchase Horne made in England, is to be interpreted as a chect front or a wall panel for a nuptial bedroom, as also the narrated subject indicates, drawn from the Metamorphoses by Ovid and absolutely suitable to exal the role of the couple for the foundation of a new stock. When Zeus, the king of the gods, resolved to destroy all humanity by a flood, Deucalion constructed an ark in which, according to one version, he and his wife rode out the flood and landed on Mount Parnassus. Upon offering a sacrifice and inquiring how to renew the human race, they were ordered to cast behind them the bones of their mother. The couple correctly interpreted this to mean they should throw behind them the stones of the hillside (“mother earth”), and they did so. Those stones thrown by Deucalion became men, while those thrown by Pyrrha became women.
