This nymph has picked her flowers from a field of anemones, while the fierce wind is blowing into her hair and dress. There are again no hints of any deeper subject other than a general respect for the forces of nature. Windflower is one of the popular names of the wood anemone that starts to flourish when spring begins.
Some people have suggested that the woman may represent Proserpina, the Roman goddess of fertility, wine and agriculture, but there are no records from the time that the painting was first exhibited that validate that theory.
Today is the Roman festival of Ceres. Above are couple photos from the ritual, and while I recover in my cozy bed I will share a story with you. This is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses,Melville’s translation. (TW: Abduction, Rape)
The Abduction of Proserpine
“The land of Sicily quakes as Typhoeus the Giant buried beneath the island heaves and even Rex Silentum (the king who rules the land of silence) shudders lest the ground in gaping seams should open and the day stream down and terrify the trembling Umpire. Tyrannus had left his dark domains to and fro, drawn in his chariot and sable steeds, inspected the foundations of the isle. His survey done, and no point found to fail, he put his fears aside; when, as he roamed, Erycina from her mountain throne, saw him and clasped her swift-winged son, and said: ‘Cupido, my child, my warrior, my power, take those sure shafts with which you conquer all, and shoot your speedy arrows to the heart of the great god to whom the last lot fell when the three realms were drawn. Your majesty subdues the gods of heaven and sea… Why should Tartara lag behind? Why not there too extend your mother’s empire and your own? The third part of the world’s at stake, while we in heaven (so long-suffering!) are despised - my power grows less, and less the power of Amor. Do you not see how Pallas and Diana, queen of the chase, have both deserted me? And Ceres’ daughter, if we suffer it, will stay a virgin too - her hope’s the same. So for the sake of our joint sovereignty, if that can touch your pride, unite in love that goddess and her uncle.’
So she spoke. Then Cupido guided by his mother, opened his quiver and of all his thousand arrows selected one, the sharpest and the surest, the arrow most obedient to the bow, and bent the pliant horn against his knee and shot the barbed shaft deep in Dis’ heart. Not far from Henna’s walls there is a lake, Pergus by name, its waters deep and still; it hears the music of the choiring swans as sweet as on Caystros’ gliding stream. Woods crown the waters, ringing every side, their leaves like awnings barring the sun’s beams. The boughs give cooling shade, the watered grass is gay with spangled flowers of every hue, and always it is spring. Here Proserpina was playing in a glade and picking flowers, pansies and lilies, with a child’s delight, filling her basket and her lap to gather more than the other girls, when, in a trice, Dis saw her, loved her, carried her away - love leapt in such a hurry! Terrified, in tears, the goddess called her mother, called her comrades too, but oftenest her mother; and, as she’d torn the shoulder of her dress, the folds slipped down and out the flowers fell, and she, in innocent simplicity, grieved in her girlish heart for their loss too. Away the chariot sped; her captor urged each horse by name and shook the dark-dyed reins on mane and neck. On through deep lakes he drove, on through Palici’s sulphurous pools that boil in reeking chasms, on past Bacchiadae, where settlers once from Corinthus’ isthmus built between two harbours their great battlements.
A bay confined by narrow points of land lies between Arethusa Pisaea and Cyane. And there lived Cyane, the most renowned of all the Nymphae Sicelidae, who gave her pool its name. Out of her waters’ midst she rose waist-high and recognised the goddess. ‘Stop, stop!’ she cried, ‘You cannot take this girl to wife against Queen Ceres’ will! She ought to have been wooed, not whirled away. I too, if humble things may be compared with great, was loved; Anapus married me; but I was wooed and won, not, like this girl, frightened and forced.’ She held out her arms outstretched to bar his way. But Saturnius restrained his wrath no longer. Urging on his steeds, his terrible steeds, and brandishing aloft his royal sceptre in his strong right arm, he hurled it to the bottom of the pool. The smitten earth opened a way to Hell and down the deep abyss the chariot plunged. But Cyane, heartbroken at the rape of Proserpine and at her pool’s outrage, in silence carried in her heart a wound beyond consoling, and in endless tears she wasted away. Into the pool - her pool and she but now its deity - she spread dissolved.
Ceres Searches for Proserpina
Ceres meanwhile in terror sought her child vainly in every land, o'er every sea. Never Aurora (the Dawn) rising with dewy hair, nor ever Hesperus (the Evening Star) saw her at rest. She lit pine-torches, one in either hand, at Aetna’s fires, and through the frosty dark bore them unsleeping. When the friendly day had dimmed the stars, she sought her daughter still from sunrise until sunset hour by hour…
Through what far lands and seas the goddess roved were long to tell; the whole world failed her search. She turned again to Sicania and there, in wanderings that led her everywhere, she too reached Cyane; who would have told all, had she not been changed. She longed to tell but had no mouth, no tongue, nor any means of speaking. Even so she gave a clue, clear beyond doubt, and floating on her pool she showed the well-known sash which Persephone had chanced to drop there in the sacred spring.
How well the goddess knew it! Then at last she seemed to understand her child was stolen, and tore her ruffed hair and beat her breast. Where the girl was she knew not, but reproached the whole wide world - ungrateful, not deserving her gift of grain - and Trinacria in chief where she had found the traces of her loss. So there with angry hands she broke the ploughs that turned the soil and sent to death alike the farmer and his labouring ox, and bade the fields betray their trust, and spoilt the seeds…
Then that fair Nymphe Alpheias rose from her pool and brushed back from he brow her dripping hair, and said : ‘O thou, divine Mother, who through the world hast sought thy child… The land is innocent; against its will it opened for that rape. While beneath the earth I glided in my Stygian stream, I saw, myself with my own eyes, your Proserpina. Her looks were sad, and fear still in her eyes; and yet a queen, and yet of that dark land Empress, and yet with power and majesty the consort of the Tyrannus Infernus (Sovereign lord of Hell).’ The mother heard in horror, thunderstruck it seemed and turned to stone.
The Return of Proserpina
Then as her shock so great gave way to grief as great, she soared borne in her chariot, to the sky’s bright realms and stood, with clouded face and hair let loose, indignant before Jove and said: ‘I come to plead for my own flesh and blood, yours too; and if the mother finds no favour, let at least the daughter move her father’s heart; love her not less because I gave her birth. Behold the daughter I have sought so long is found, if found is surer loss, or if but to know where she is finding her. Her theft I’ll bear if he’ll but bring her back; a thief, a kidnapper’s no proper husband for child of yours, even if she’s mine no more.’
And Juppiter replied: ‘The child is yours and mine, our common care and love, If we allow things proper names, here is no harm, no crime, but love and passion. Such a son-in-law, if you, Ma'am, but consent, will not disgrace us. To be Jove’s brother, what a splendid thing! - if that were all! What then, when that’s not all, when he yields place to me only because the lots so fell? But if your heart’s so set to part them, Proserpina shall reach the sky again on one condition, that in Hell her lips have touched no food; such is the rule forestablished by the three Parcae.’
So Jove replied; but Ceres was resolved to win her daughter back. Not so fate permitted, for the girl had broken her fast and wandering, childlike, through the orchard trees from a low branch had picked a pomegranate and peeled the yellow rind and found the seeds and nibbled seven. The only one who saw was Orphne’s son, Ascalaphus, whom she, no the least famous of the Nymphae Avernales, bore once to Acheron in her dusky bower. He saw and told, in spite, and by his tale stole her return away. The Queen of Hell (Regina Erebi) groaned in distress and changed the tale-bearer into a bird. She threw into his face water from Phlegethon, and lo! a beak and feathers and enormous eyes! Reshaped, he wears great tawny wings, his head swells huge… a loathsome bird, ill omen for mankind, a skulking screech-owl, sorrow’s harbinger.
That tell-tale tongue of his no doubt deserved the punishment. But the Acheloides, why should it be that they have feathers now and feet of birds, though still a girl’s fair face, the sweet-voiced Sirenes? Was it not because, when Proserpine was picking those spring flowers, they were her comrades there, and, when in vain they’d sought for her through all the lands, they prayed for wings to carry them across the waves, so that the seas should know their search, and found the gods gracious, and then suddenly saw golden plumage clothing all their limbs? Yet to reserve that dower of glorious song, their melodies’ enchantment, they retained their fair girls’ features and their human voice. Then Juppiter, to hold the balance fair between his brother and his sister in her grief, portioned the rolling years in equal parts. Now Proserpine, of two empires alike great deity, spends with her mother half the year’s twelve months and with her husband half. Straightway her heart and features are transformed; that face which even Dis must have found unhappy beams with joy, as when the sun, long lost and hidden in the clouds and rain, rides forth in triumph from the clouds again. So Ceres had regained her Proserpine.”
[Image descriptions: (1) A stone relief of Ceres or Demeter. She’s holding bundles of grain and poppy, and two snakes wrap themselves around her arms. (2) A round dish laden with small dishes holding various liquids and resins for offering. (3) A hole dug in the earth, surrounded by violets and dandelions, roots, and seedlings. End descriptions.]
