Nicolaes van Helt Stockade
, Dutch, 1614-1669
Title
Jupiter and GanymedeDate1660-1669
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions
119.5 x 113.8 cm
Signedlower left: Stocade. F
Credit LinePresented, Pierce Higgins, 1940
Object numberNGI.1046
Label TextGanymede was a shepherd boy of such beauty that Jupiter fell in love with him and carried him off to the Olympus, where he made him his cup-bearer, a position of distinction. Although some seventeenth-century critics regarded the subject as indecorous, it could also allude to the death of a young child, whose pure soul was lifted up by a God. Van Helt-Stokade was active in Amsterdam as a painter of biblical and mythological subjects in a classicist style. The present painting was probably originally part of a ceiling of a house in Amsterdam.