Apollo Granting Phaeton Permission to Drive the Chariot of the Sun

Painted about 1695 by Johann Michael Rottmayr, Apollo Granting Phaeton Permission to Drive the Chariot of the Sun shows the young mortal Phaeton kneeling before the radiant sun-god, who spreads his arm in the fatal gesture of consent — the promise that would end in Phaeton’s plunge from the sky. The Austrian court painter piles the scene with dramatic Baroque stagecraft: the golden god on his cloud-borne seat, the rearing horses of the sun, the swirl of flame-orange and deep blue drapery against a glowing sky. Rottmayr, the leading fresco painter of the Habsburg lands and an apprentice of Johann Carl Loth, brought the full theatricality of High Baroque colour and light to the altars and ceilings of palaces and churches across Austria, and here the spectacle of the myth is rendered with a warmth that anticipates the rococo. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.