Artwork Information

Ovid’s Metamorphoses describes how the Giants piled rocks one upon the other in an attempt to reach and conquer the stars. To repel them Zeus hurled his thunderbolts, so that the rocks cascaded back to earth, crushing the Giants beneath them.

Although the most famous interpretation of the theme was the entire room frescoed by Guilio Romano at Palazzo del Te, Mantua, Coriolano’s woodcut after Guido Reni’s Fall of the Giants was a more important pictorial source for Rosa (Wallace, 1973).