Vertumnus

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Vertumnus and Pomona by Luca Giordano (1682–1683), private collection
Vertumnus and Pomona by Luca Giordano (1682–1683), private collection

In Roman mythology, Vertumnus (Vortumnus, Vertimnus) was the god of seasons, change[1] and plant growth, as well as gardens and fruit trees. He could change his form at will; using this power, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses (xiv), he tricked Pomona into talking to him by disguising himself as an old woman and gaining entry to her orchard, then using a narrative warning of the dangers of rejecting a suitor (the embedded tale of Iphis and Anaxarete) to seduce her: David Littlefield has read in the episode a movement from rape to mutual desire, effected against an orderly, "civilised" Latian landscape[2] Conversely Roxanne Gentilcore reads in its diction and narrative strategies images of deception, veiled threat and seduction, in which Pomona, the tamed hamadryad now embodying the orchard, does not have a voice.

The tale of Vertumnus was the only purely Latin tale in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The name Vortumnus appears to derive from Etruscan Voltumna. It was likely then further contaminated in popular etymology[3] by a pre-existing Latin word vertēre meaning "to change", hence the alternative form, Vertumnus.

Ovid recalled a time (Fasti, vi, June 9 "Vestalia") when the Roman forum was still a reedy swamp, when

That god, Vertumnus, whose name fits many forms,
Wasn’t yet so-called from damming back the river (averso amne).

Vertumnus' cult arrived in Rome around 300 BC, and a temple to him was constructed on the Aventine Hill in 264 BC. Sextus Propertius' elegy instancing Vertumnus (Elegy 4.2.41-46) refers to a statue of him that was placed at the Vicus Tuscus and decorated according to the changing seasons. His festival was the Vertumnalia on August 13.

A rococo Vertumne et Pomone, by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne , 1760.
A rococo Vertumne et Pomone, by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne , 1760.

The subject Vertumnus and Pomona appealed to European sculptors and painters of the sixteenth through the eighteenth century for its opportunity to contrast young fresh female beauty with an aged crone, providing a wholly disguised erotic subtext,[4] though Ovid does remark that the kisses given by Vertumnus were such as an old woman would never have given.[5] The subject was even woven into tapestry in series with the generic theme Loves of the Gods, of which the mid-sixteenth century Brussels hanging at Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, woven to cartoons attributed to Jan Vermeyen, must be among the earliest. François Boucher provided designs for the tapestry-weaver Maurice Jacques at the Gobelins tapestry manufactory for a series that included Vertumnus and Pomona (1775 - 1778), and, extending the theme of erotic disguise, Jupiter wooing Callisto in the guise of Diana: an example is at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Mme de Pompadour, who sang well and danced gracefully, had played the role of Pomone in a pastoral presented to a small audience at Versailles;[6] the sculpture by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (1760) alludes to the event.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ " Vertumnus then, that turn'st the year about," (Thomas Nashe, Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592, printed 1600).
  2. ^ David Littlefield, "Pomona and Vertumnus: a fruition of history in Ovid's Metamorphoses" Arion 4 (1965) p 470.
  3. ^ As given by Sextus Propertius, Elegy 4. Propertius' editor L. Richardson Jr. (1977)notes that thes etymology is not philologically sound.
  4. ^ Similar subtly pornographic uses were made of the theme of Zeus disguised as Diana, and Callisto.
  5. ^ qualia numquam vera dedisset anus.
  6. ^ "Pourquoi Le Devin du Village est un pastorale?"

[edit] References

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