The strength of “Metamorphosis” in the splendid exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

“Metamorphosis”, a powerful and universal concept. Transformation and change are processes from which nothing and no one escapes. Thinking you can stop them, even with temporary artifices, is a vain dream. A thousand-year-old cultural paradigm by which mythology, philosophy and art have been seduced, also thanks to crucial turning points such as Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”. In the year 8 AD the Roman poet Publius Ovid Naso (43 BC–17 AD) wrote this grandiose Latin epic poem, reworking numerous myths of Greek origin (such as those of Narcissus, Arachne, Medusa, the nymph Io), representing a visionary world dotted with transformations of gods and men into animals, plants and stones.

The work was defined in 1604 by Karel van Mander as an “artists’ Bible”. After the Bible, in fact, the “Metamorphoses” are one of the most attractive texts with the most lasting artistic inspiration over the centuries. An enlightening, inclusive and exciting example is the “Metamorphoses” exhibition, set up in the prestigious Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and created in close collaboration with the Galleria Borghese in Rome.

Masterpieces of every era from museums and collections all over the world will be on display in the splendid Dutch museum from 6 February to 25 May 2026. Subsequently, in a different format, the exhibition will be held at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, from 22 June to 20 September 2026. Among the highlights of the eighty works on display, which offer aesthetic enjoyment to paintings, sculptures, goldsmithery, ceramics, photography and contemporary video art, include absolute masterpieces such as “Sleeping Hermaphrodite” by Bernini, from the Musée du Louvre; Titian’s “Danae”, painted for King Philip II of Spain; “Minerva and Arachne” by Tintoretto; the iconic “Jupiter and Io” and “Danae” by Correggio, both painted for the Duke of Mantua; as well as Caravaggio’s “Narcissus” and Rodin’s “Marble Pygmalion”, alongside Gérôme’s painted version. Three of Arcimboldo’s composite and grotesque faces are also on display.

The life-size bronze “Perseus” with the head of Medusa, created by the Dutch artist Hubert Gerhardt for the Duke of Bavaria, is also exhibited for the first time together with the prototype used by Cellini for his famous “Perseus”. What can we say about the marble “Envy” by the Flemish sculptor Giusto Le Court? The terrifying bust of a woman with snakes instead of hair and the hateful grin of someone who cannot tolerate the good of others exudes a surprising, chilling contemporaneity.

Lust, envy, jealousy, violence, cunning and deception of the gods (almost always oriented towards the seduction of women!) are evoked by this breathtaking exhibition which plunges us into a timeless dreamlike dimension, whose vibrations subvert the rational perception of the world through the representation of various iconic fables, “like the creation of the cosmos from formless chaos – we read in the presentation – the story of the weaver Arachne, transformed into a spider by the jealous goddess Minerva to weave his webs forever, or the events of Jupiter, the supreme god, who had to disguise himself repeatedly to deceive his jealous wife Juno and his victims. We find him depicted as a bull, a swan, wrapped in fog or as a shower of gold”.

The exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, designed by Aldo Bakker and curated by Frits Scholten, offers representations of impressive perfectionism, such as the hand of Jupiter barely hinted at in the cloud of fog that caresses the nymph Io in the ineffable painting by Correggio (1531), also taken up by the enormous logo of the exhibition that stands out on the external façade of the museum. Works that seem to challenge any figurative feat of artificial intelligence.

But can art still hold its own? “Yes, man wins because compared to artificial intelligence he has two more peculiar qualities – the director of the Rijksmuseum Taco Dibbits replied to the “Gazzetta del Sud” – which are creativity and coincidence”, that is, man’s ability to combine distant and casually perceived situations, emotions and perceptions, resulting in unpredictable thoughts and works. Francesca Cappelletti, director of the Galleria Borghese in Rome, outlined the ideational process of the exhibition and recalled the power of classical culture to interact with contemporary man. An extraordinary twinning, that between Rome and Amsterdam, in the sign of that universality of beauty on which Kant lavished irrefutable and immortal words in the “Critique of Judgment”.