Evening tour of the “Metamorphoses” exhibition at the Kadriorg Art Museum

An evening tour of the exhibition is a special chance to see the displays in a small group, in the quiet of the closed museum, guided by an art historian.

The Roman poet Ovid’s poem “Metamorphoses” is often called “the Bible of painters”. This collection of more than 250 myths is one of the most influential and wide-ranging literary sources for mythological subjects. This is where the famous and often reinterpreted myths of Narcissus, Apollo and Daphne, Jupiter’s love affairs and many miraculous transformations come from, inspiring artists for centuries. Everyone knows Ovid to some degree, because his work largely shaped our modern idea of classical mythology.

The starting point of the exhibition is the decorative interior of the state hall of Kadriorg Palace, above all the central ceiling painting “Diana and Actaeon”, which shows one of the best-known myths from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”. During the tour we will look at interpretations of this and other myths in the broad context of 18th-century court culture and European cultural history, and trace how European monarchs and various social groups in the 17th and 18th centuries used Ovid’s work and the poet’s biography for ideological purposes.

Historical books and works of art lent to the exhibition from the collections of Manufactures nationales – Sèvres & Mobilier national (France), the National Gallery in Prague, the Scientific Library of the University of Tartu, the National Library of Latvia and other collections show how varied a source of inspiration myths were for secular works of art in many genres, moods and moral messages.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book which, besides rich illustrations, includes six of Ovid’s myths published in Estonian translation for the first time. The verse translations from Latin were made by the classical philologist Maria-Kristiina Lotman, associate professor of classical philology at the University of Tartu.

Aleksandra Murre is an art historian and curator, and director of the Kadriorg Art Museum. She has worked at the Art Museum of Estonia since 2000 and curates a number of exhibitions at the Kadriorg Art Museum and the Mikkel Museum. Her research interests include Russian art of the 18th and 19th centuries, the history of Kadriorg and the history of art collecting in Estonia. She is active in popularising a wide range of art-history topics through different museum programmes and publications.

Marianna Nõmmik has been leading tours at the branches of the Art Museum of Estonia for several years: KUMU, Kadriorg Palace and the Nigulise Museum. She is currently deepening her knowledge at the Estonian Academy of Arts, in the art history and visual culture programme.

Tickets: €22 / €20

Advance tickets are sold on the Fienta platform. If places are still available, tickets can also be bought at the Kadriorg Art Museum box office one hour before the event starts.