Apollo in his Chariot
Luca Giordano·1685
Historical Context
Apollo in His Chariot at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, painted around 1685, depicts the sun god driving his chariot across the heavens. This subject was quintessentially suited to Giordano's skill with aerial, ceiling-style compositions and luminous color. Giordano's mythological canvases display his absorption of Venetian colorism, deploying warm flesh tones and lavish drapery against luminous skies with the fluency of a born decorative painter. These works circulated across European colle...
Technical Analysis
The radiant chariot and plunging horses create a dynamic celestial composition. Giordano's characteristic warm palette and bold brushwork capture the sun god's blazing passage across the sky.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the radiant chariot and plunging horses creating a dynamic celestial composition: Giordano renders the sun god's daily journey as a scene of explosive equestrian energy.
- ◆Look at the warm palette capturing Apollo's blazing passage: the solar deity is rendered in the golden tones appropriate to the sun itself — warm ochres and bright yellows against the blue sky.
- ◆Find the dramatic foreshortening of the horses seen from below: the ceiling-painting format requires the viewer to imagine themselves beneath the sun's chariot as it passes overhead.
- ◆Observe that Boston's circa 1685 Apollo exists alongside multiple other Giordano subjects in the collection — the museum's holdings allow comparison of his handling of mythological, religious, and allegorical subjects across his career.
