Andromeda Chained to the Rocks was painted by Rembrant to represent his first full length mythological female nude history painting and is taken from a story in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the story, an Ethiopian princess was chained to a rock to be sacrificed to a sea monster as a punishment for her mother's boasting that tormented the Ethiopian people. Unlike many other artists that depicted this story by showing Andromeda, her rescuer Perseus, and the sea monster all in the same composition; Rembrandt's shies away from classical conventions by showing her not as a glamorous beauty but as a frightened naturalistic looking girl. He didn't include any other figures except for her alarmed look out of the picture space to the right creates narrative tension. The painting is an example of Rembrandt's rejection of idealized beauty. Since he did not believe true beauty existed naturally, he painted women as he saw them; naturally imperfect and flawed.
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