A collaboration with Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum explores the enduring power of one of the most celebrated narrative poems in Western culture.<\/p>\n
Rome’s Galleria Borghese presents\u00a0Metamorphoses. Ovid and the Arts, a major exhibition running from 23 June until 20 September 2026 and curated by Francesca Cappelletti and Frits Scholten.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The exhibition takes Ovid’s\u00a0Metamorphoses\u00a0as 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.<\/p>\n
Organised into thematic sections, the exhibition opens with\u00a0Chaos and Creation, featuring works by Goltzius, Rodin and Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i tracing the passage from formless matter to cosmic order.<\/p>\n
Subsequent rooms address the transmission of the Ovidian text through manuscripts and translations across the centuries; the myth of Proserpina, grouped around Bernini’s\u00a0Rape of Proserpina; Arachne and the art of weaving as metaphor for poetic creation; the loves of Jupiter, including Correggio’s celebrated\u00a0Dana\u00eb\u00a0and Michelangelo’s\u00a0Leda and the swan; and the myth of Pygmalion, through interpretations by G\u00e9r\u00f4me and Rodin.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n