Orpheus in the Underworld

Orpheus in the Underworld, painted on copper in 1612 and now at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes, depicts the mythological musician descending to Hades to retrieve his dead wife Eurydice through the power of his lyre's music. Frans Francken the Younger's treatment belongs to the wave of Orpheus paintings that swept Flemish and Dutch studios in the early seventeenth century, driven by the subject's musical, theatrical, and philosophical appeal. Orpheus charming wild animals and the rulers of the underworld with his lyre was a perfect vehicle for demonstrating the power of art and music over brute force and natural law — a theme with obvious resonance in a culture that valued the arts as the highest achievement of civilization. The Nîmes museum context — a southern French city with deep Roman roots — provides an appropriate setting for a painting of classical mythology.

The underworld setting required Francken to manage a dramatically lit environment: Orpheus's figure and lyre would have been illuminated from an indeterminate source against the deep shadows of the Underworld, with Pluto and Persephone visible on their thrones in the distance. Copper's smooth surface supported the precise rendering of the lyre's strings and the complex expressions on the faces of the supernatural beings enchanted by Orpheus's music.