Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Arcas.
The gallery
Arcas and Callisto
Sebastiano Ricci, c. 1725–1730
This shimmering late-Baroque canvas by the Venetian master Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734) captures the climactic moment of the Arcas myth as told by Ovid (Metamorphoses 2.496–530). The young hunter Arcas, son of Zeus and Callisto, has come upon a she-bear in the Arcadian forest — in truth his own mother, transformed by Juno's jealous curse. Ricci freezes the instant of near-matricide: Arcas stands in a heroic pose with his javelin poised to strike, arrested by the beast's strangely human, pleading gaze. The bear's eyes are rendered with deliberate emphasis, the visual key that reveals an apparent hunting scene to be a tragedy of unwitting recognition. Above, Jupiter is shown intervening to avert the crime and bear both mother and son into the heavens as the constellations Ursa Major and Boötes (Arctophylax, the Bear-warden). Praised for its theatricality and luminous tonality, the work is among the rare paintings to depict Arcas himself rather than the more frequently illustrated seduction or discovery of Callisto.