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Among the many myths handed down to us from ancient Greece, that of Ariadne is one of the most fascinating. Daughter of the king of Crete Minos (son of Zeus and Europe) and of Pasiphae (daughter of Helios, god of the sun), Ariadne is mentioned incidentally in the Iliad where she is presented not as a goddess, but as a princess. Seduced by Theseus, she helps him to escape from the Labyrinth. It is indeed the help that she brings to Theseus which allows the latter to obtain victory over the Minotaur: against the promise of marrying him, she provides him with a thread which he unwinds behind him in order to find his path. But, after killing the Minotaur, the hero abandons him on the island of Naxos - according to the most common tradition - or on the island of Dia, according to Homer. From this event, the versions diverge both as regards the cause of Theseus' conduct and the subsequent fate of Ariadne. However, mythographers agree to link it to the fate of the god Dionysus, whom she marries after being transported to heaven and made immortal by Zeus for this purpose. It is this gift of immortality that inspired the iconography of our relief, where we see Ariadne majestically installed in a chariot crowned by a genie and accompanied by a Dionysian procession made up of two leopards and two dancing satyrs. As for the composition of our marble oval, it was executed after one of the two Renaissance bronze reliefs adorning the base of the Idolino, a famous ancient statue now in the Archaeological Museum of Florence ( N ° Inv. 1637). The relief depicting "The Triumph of Ariadne" is the work of the sculptor and bronzier Girolamo Lombardo (1506-1590) and was produced in the 1550s following an order from the Grand -Duc d'Urbino Guidobaldo della Rovere II. [...]
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