Feast of the Gods (art)

A depiction by Hans Rottenhammer (1600, Hermitage Museum) probably of the wedding of Neptune and Amphitrite is set in a beach-side pavilion, with the sea full of an unruly crowd of marine mythological creatures.

A more sophisticated but similar depiction of a rustic picnic eaten on the ground, is The Feast of the Gods by Giovanni Bellini (1514), later changed by Titian (to 1529), a large and important painting; both show the story of Priapus and Lotis.

Around the mid-century Taddeo Zuccari did the Wedding of Bacchus and Ariadne in fresco in the Villa Giulia, Rome,[7] and in northern Europe Francesco Primaticcio painted that of Peleus and Thetis in a mythological series in the ballroom of the Palace of Fontainebleau.

van Haarlem was enormous at over four metres wide, a commission in 1593 from the Stadtholder Maurice, Prince of Orange for his palace, and Jacob Jordaens' The Golden Apple of Discord (1633, from an oil sketch by Rubens) is also a monumental treatment.

Both the weddings of Cupid and Psyche and that of Peleus and Thetis were common subjects in antiquity, going back to Greek black-figure vase painting.

The earlier paintings may owe something to entertainments alla antica such as those of the Compagnia della Cassuola ("Company of the Shovel") mentioned by Vasari, where a social confraternity in Florence including artists such as Giovanni Francesco Rustici and Andrea del Sarto held elaborate dinners which might include the attendees dressing as classical gods and re-enacting episodes from mythology.

The New Palace at Potsdam in Berlin has a ceiling painting in the Marmorsaal ("Marble Hall") depicting the Feast of the Gods on Olympus (1769) by the Neoclassical painter Amédée van Loo.

In 1863 the Peredvizhniki ("Wanderers") group of progressive artists was founded after several left the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in disgust after the subject set for the annual Gold Medal contest (the Russian equivalent of the Prix de Rome) was "The Feast of Odin in Valhalla", which they thought both un-Russian and of no social relevance.

[18] Later paintings, particularly in England, sometimes depicted fairy scenes of a somewhat similar types, such as The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania (1849) and its matching Reconciliation, by Sir Joseph Noel Paton.