A collaboration with Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum explores the enduring power of one of the most celebrated narrative poems in Western culture.
Rome’s Galleria Borghese presents Metamorphoses. Ovid and the Arts, a major exhibition running from 23 June until 20 September 2026 and curated by Francesca Cappelletti and Frits Scholten.
Developed in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where it was first presented, the show arrives in Rome in a distinct and autonomous configuration, bringing together more than 80 works drawn from leading European and American museums.
The exhibition takes Ovid’s Metamorphoses as its organising principle, exploring transformation as a universal force that shapes the cosmos, the natural world, the human body and the boundaries between the mortal and the divine.
Organised into thematic sections, the exhibition opens with Chaos and Creation, featuring works by Goltzius, Rodin and Brâncuși tracing the passage from formless matter to cosmic order.
Subsequent rooms address the transmission of the Ovidian text through manuscripts and translations across the centuries; the myth of Proserpina, grouped around Bernini’s Rape of Proserpina; Arachne and the art of weaving as metaphor for poetic creation; the loves of Jupiter, including Correggio’s celebrated Danaë and Michelangelo’s Leda and the swan; and the myth of Pygmalion, through interpretations by Gérôme and Rodin.
Further sections consider Perseus and Medusa – where metamorphosis becomes simultaneously an instrument of destruction and salvation – before the exhibition closes with works by Titian and Poussin on the transformative power of love, desire and loss, including a series of late-mediaeval tapestries devoted to Narcissus and Echo.
For full exhibition details see Galleria Borghese website. Photo A. Novelli.