Ovid in Sondershausen

The Roman poet Ovid died around 2,000 years ago (17/18 C.E.). No other author of antiquity exerted such a comprehensive and profound impact on the art of posterity. His "Metamorphoses", an epochal literary work of art, also became a standard work of ancient mythology, from which artists for centuries derived narratives and motifs for paintings and graphic sheets, sculptures, stucco work, and handicrafts. Schloss Sondershausen in Thuringia, the former residential palace of the Counts and Princes of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, is a very special place in the history of Ovid's reception. Motifs from Ovid's works can be found here on 16th-century murals, on stucco work from the early 17th century, in the interior decoration with a variety of ceiling paintings from the late 17th century, in large-scale ceiling paintings from the 18th century, as well as a fountain figure of the most spectacular hero of antiquity, Hercules, in the middle of the palace courtyard.