The Challenge of the Pierides

Rosso Fiorentino painted this Challenge of the Pierides around 1530, a mythological subject from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which the nine daughters of King Pierus challenged the Muses to a singing contest and were turned into magpies for their presumption. The subject was unusual in Italian painting and reflects Rosso's intellectual ambitions and his ability to treat obscure mythological texts as subjects for painting. Created during the period when Rosso was transitioning between Italy and the French court of Francis I, the work demonstrates his command of mythological narrative and his ability to create visually compelling compositions from literary sources. The subject's moral of hubris punished would have resonated with humanist patrons familiar with Ovid's text.

The panel shows Rosso's Mannerist approach to the mythological nude with angular, dynamic figures and the dissonant color harmonies that characterize his revolutionary pictorial language.