Visualizing Voice: The Myth of Echo and Narcissus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Pompeiian Wall Paintings

Mariapia Pietropaolo, McMaster University

One of the most popular stories from ancient Greek and Roman mythology is the story of Narcissus in love with his own watery image. In the Metamorphoses, the Roman poet Ovid also includes the story of the nymph Echo’s unrequited love for Narcissus. Rejected by him, she begins to fade away until she exists only as a disembodied voice. The myth was also a popular subject of wall paintings in and around Pompeii. In this paper, I discuss the relationship between the textual and figurative representations of Echo’s voice, and I explore the aesthetic problem of painting a voice.

Zoom link: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/86786144716

Co-sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura and the University of Toronto Department of Art History.