In the Metamorphoses (I:151–176), Ovid tells of the Giants, aggressive children of Gaia who piled mountain on mountain to reach the stars and seize the heavens from the Olympian gods. In response, Jupiter hurled his thunderbolts, shattering the mountains and toppling the Giants below. The Earth then transformed the Giants’ blood into a new form of being: humans. With a characteristically agitated pen line and elongated figures, the sculptor Guglielmo della Porta depicts the Giants tumbling in a defeated mass below the deities. Guglielmo rendered sixteen episodes from the Metamorphoses as designs for plaquettes. Several cast versions of these plaquettes are known, including a complete set in bronze in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Guglielmo della Porta (ca. 1500–1577), The Defeat of the Giants, ca. 1560–70. Pen and brown ink over black chalk on laid paper, 7 1/8 x 10 5/16 inches (181 x 262 mm). Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) in 1909, I, 33.