The Mocking of Ceres

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, V: 446-461, tells how Ceres, whilst searching for her abducted daughter, Proserpine, stopped at a cottage, worn out and thirsty. After an old woman there gave her a drink made from soaking barley, a boy laughed at the Goddess for the speed at which she drank it. Ceres, irritated by this, threw the drink at him: 'So - soaked - his face soon showed those grains as spots; his arms were changed to claws; a tail was added to his limbs. And that his form might not inflict much harm, the goddess shrank him, left him small - much like a lizard, and yet tinier in size. This wondrous change was watched by the old woman, who wept to see it, even as she tried to touch the transformed shape: he scurried off to find a place to hide. The name he got [Stellio] is suited to his skin: the starry newt - a beast that glitters with his starlike spots.'

Presumed lost until its appearance in these Rooms in 1987, the present picture is an early work, datable to the 1650s. The composition was clearly inspired by Hendrick Goudt's engraving of 1610 after Elsheimer (fig. 1; see K. Andrews, Adam Elsheimer, New York, 1977, pl. 86), although the only direct parallel is the figure of the boy. The print had a considerable influence in Holland in the mid-seventeenth century and is reflected in paintings by, for instance, Salomon Koninck (see W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schler, III, 1983, pp. 1633 and 1643, nos. 1088 and 1089, illustrated pp. 1662-3) and the picture formerly attributed to Godfried Schalcken in Dulwich Picture Gallery, (inv. no. 191).