Aubry after J. W. Baur

Aetas Aurea
[Golden Age]

From Ovidii Metamorphoses oder Verwandelungs Bücher
[Ovid’s Metamorphoses…]

Nuremberg: Paul Fürst, [1680s]

NYPL, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Collection

The most important source for the myth of the Golden Age, in which the first "race" of men lived in peace and pleasure, is Hesiod’s Works and Days (eighth century B.C.E.). Later, in the first century, Ovid described the Golden Age in Book I of his Metamorphoses:"That first age was golden: all was then fresh and new / and so arranged that out of spontaneous goodness, men, / without the compulsion of laws or fear of punishment, kept / their faith with one another, behaving with decency, / fairness, justice and generosity. . . ."

The artist and engraver Johann Wilhelm Baur was born in Strasbourg in 1607, spent much of his life in Italy, and moved to Vienna shortly before his death at the age of thirty-four. In his last years in Vienna, he created 150 plates illustrating Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the first of which is shown here in a later edition engraved by Aubry.
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