Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (after Jacob Pynas)

Born in Cologne, Magdalena de Passe, like her brothers, was trained in the workshopof their father Crispin, a prolific printmaker and publisher.  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, family workshops were virtually the only setting in which women could receive artistic training.  Although the de Passe family worked together on many projects, Magdalena’s religious and mythological landscapes were independently conceived.  Salmacis and Hermaphroditusis one of a series of prints depicting stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Delicately rendered foliage, hair, and drapery blend with the interconnected bodies of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus in a sophisticated arrangement.  The two lines of verse just below the print define de Passe’s subject as a “virtuous image of marriage, in which man and woman are united in harmony.”  In other words,the caption transforms Ovid’s myth into a contemporary ethical exemplar that praises the honorable institution of marriage.