Jove Casts His Thunderbolts at the Rebellious Giants (c. 1695): Artwork and History

Jove Casts His Thunderbolts at the Rebellious Giants (c. 1695) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Johann Michael Rottmayr (Austrian, 1654–1730).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Johann Michael Rottmayr’s bold brushwork, vivid palette, and forward-tilted compositions indicate that this painting and its companions were hung over doorways, offering a forceful illusion to viewers below. Here, the immense power of the Roman god Jove’s gleaming thunderbolts looms overhead. Jove, also known as Jupiter, flies forward and rears back his fist, ready to send the giants who have climbed up to attack the heavens tumbling back down to earth. The strongly contrasted light and dark passages, called chiaroscuro, amplify the scene’s intensity.

Object facts

• Title: Jove Casts His Thunderbolts at the Rebellious Giants
• Date: c. 1695
• Artist attribution: Johann Michael Rottmayr (Austrian, 1654–1730)
• Place of origin: Austria
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 81.3 × 125.2 cm (32 × 49 1/2 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1961.41

Collection credit

Gift of Jacob S. Sherman

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.