The Rape of Ganymede

Around 1700, Florentine villas and palaces were being filled with scenes from Ovid, and this is one of them: Ganymede, a Trojan prince the poets called the handsomest of mortals, being carried up to Olympus. Jupiter had seen him from the sky and come down in the form of an eagle to take him. In the story it works out as a promotion. The boy replaces Hebe as cupbearer to the gods, the one who pours the nectar at their table. Gabbiani gives you the moment of the lift itself, the great bird's wings still spread as the ground falls away beneath the youth. It is the kind of mythological piece a Medici court painter turned out for a wall or a ceiling, a story everyone who saw it would have known by heart.