Supporting the future: the arts

Rijksmuseum - Metamorphoses

Passion, desire, lust, jealousy, cunning and deceit – in the exhibition Metamorphoses, the Rijksmuseum shows how artists across the centuries have given themselves over to the famous stories of the Roman poet Ovid.

Composed more than 2,000 years ago, Ovid’s monumental poem Metamorphoses describes a world of transformations — of gods and humans into animals, plants or stone.
This show brings together more than 80 masterpieces from museums and collections around the world, by artists such as Titian, Correggio, Cellini, Caravaggio, Rubens, Rodin, Brancusi and Bourgeois. Each of them, in their own time, rivalled Ovid – one of antiquity’s greatest poets – in imaginative power and artistic vision.
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The exhibition is a collaboration between the Rijksmuseum and Galleria Borghese, Rome. Exhibition design is by renowned Dutch designer Aldo Bakker. A trilingual catalogue — in Dutch, English, and Italian — will accompany the exhibition.