Neptune and Amphitrite

The impact of Gossart’s stay in Rome in 1509 took another decade to surface. Between 1516 and 1524 , he again worked for Philip of Burgundy. The Neptune and Amphitrite is the only extant part of a programme of mythological paintings made for Philip’s Suytburg (Souburg) castle near Middleburg in Zeeland. The choice of Neptune, god of the sea, and his wife, a Nereid or sea-nymph, was appropriate for the Admiral. These startlingly large nudes (the first nudes in the history of Flemish art) have few precedents in Northern Renaissance art. D�rer’s Adam and Eve inspired the poses but not their ample bodies. Gossart was influenced, too, by Jacopo de’ Barbari, the Venetian who also painted at Middleburg (see e.g. his Mars and Venus). The deities stand like colossal statues in the call of an ancient temple. He has elongated the bodies and extended their erotic character. Features such as the ‘bucrania’ (ox skulls) on the architrave doubtlessly derived from Gossart’s Roman drawings.