The Heckscher Museum of Art’s collection spans 500 years with particular emphasis on art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. American landscape painting and work by Long Island artists, past and present, are particular strengths, as is American and European modernism.
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The Rape of Proserpine
Between 1670 and 1700, Francois Girardon oversaw much of the sculptural production for Louis XIV's many building projects. Originally commissioned for the Parterre d'Eau garden at Versailles, The Rape of Proserpine was to have been one of four monumental marble groups depicting scenes of abduction that were intended to mark the garden's corners. Although the Parterre was never completed, Girardon's marble was placed in Jules Mansart's Colonnade. Girardon's subject derives from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Pluto, the god of the underworld, fell in love with and abducted Proserpine, daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. Demeter's grief was so great that Pluto was persuaded to allow Proserpine to return from the underworld for six months each year, thus explaining the change of seasons according to classical mythology. This bronze version of Girardon's sculpture was probably cast from a clay model that would have been used to guide the carving of the monumental marble. At least several bronzes exist, in two known sizes. They were cast in sections, and the bases differ from one another in their delineation of the rocky outcrop on which the figures are placed. The Rape of Proserpine is Girardon's most important sculpture; composed of three figures interlocked in a complex spiral, it rivals the work of the master of Italian Baroque sculpture, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.