Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Abduction of Ganymede: Correggio
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Abduction of Ganymede: Correggio
Commissioned by Gonzagga: Palazzo del Te, Mantua
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An "erastes", an adult man, when enamoured
of a male youth, an "eromenos", he offered
as a gift to the eromenos, a bird. The bird was often a cockerel. It became
popular to use an Eagle to symbolize the idea of a ganymede.
Both Ganymedes and Cupids are pretty boys, and are often conflated together.
Often artistic works, sculpture or visual art such as paintings show flight,
which is intended to symbolize the uplifting sensations of love. Thus scenes
of Eagles raping a ganymede or a cupid figure intend not violence, but the
pleasures of love.
Why an Eagle? An Eagle is a raptor, the name suggestive of rapture or to
ravish, to enrapture.
A person's emotional love rises to join God's love, leaving behind any
baseness, represented by the earthly dog.
"Look down on me from heaven while I have my youth in my arms, and do not
envy me, O Jupiter, and I shall envy no one. Content yourself, O Jupiter,
with Ganymede, and leave to me the splendid Chiomadoro ['golden-curls']
who is sweeter than honey. O, I am thrice and four times happy! For truly
I have kissed, and truly I kiss again your mouth, O delightful youth! ...
Intertwine your tongue with mine, O youth!"
and
"Now the form of a swan, then of a shower of gold,
Now of snake, then of shepherd does Jove wear
To aid his projects amorous and bold.
Now changing into an eagle, he takes the air
Like Cupid, and into heavenly fold
Carries, suspended, his Ganymede so fair,
All nude, his golden locks with cypress bound,
And with naught else but ivy girded round.
The pagan goddess Hebe is replaced y the god Ganymede,
as Plato and Aristotle assumed that women were inferior
in intelligence. In ancient Greece, women were little
more than sequestered childbearers. These men, as well
as men during the Renaissance were essentially misogynistic.
Thus it is very clear that the eagle represents the flight
upwards to a heaven and God, where intelligence and emotional
love of a higher order than that base level of intelligence
and emotional love found on earth, which is clearly inferior.
These men were clearly homosexual in their earthly amorous
loves.
"Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society",
by Saslow, James M., pp. 30, 31, 120
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