Boreas Abducting Oreithyia (c. 1755–1760): Art, History and Details

Boreas Abducting Oreithyia (c. 1755–1760) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre (French, 1713–1789).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Pierre took the subject of this drawing from the celebrated work the Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 bc-ad 17), which recounts the loves of the gods and goddesses of antiquity. Oreithyia, daughter of Erectheus, king of Athens, so inspired the passion of the god of the north wind, Boreas, that he descended to the earth to kidnap her. Although this subject was not especially common, Ovid was a favorite source for painters during the 1700s. Pierre was influenced here by a tapestry designed by François Boucher showing the same scene.

Object facts

• Title: Boreas Abducting Oreithyia
• Date: c. 1755–1760
• Creator attribution: Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre (French, 1713–1789)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: red chalk
• Dimensions: Overall: 22.5 x 40.9 cm (8 7/8 x 16 1/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.366

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.