Relook

I was looking at an iconic fresco detail which is famous - it is Europa on a bull - and I thought from a compositional perspective there was something wrong. It was the sense that the central figures do not belong to each other, and this made me think that the composition did not have a Greek original but copies of several Greek works and sculptures used as a stock or template.The sensation of sculptural space has been created by the superposition of figures on top of another. One can see this throughout the history of art where an artist uses drawings of figures in his or her sketchbook.What intrigued me was the perspective of the figures.They were sculptural  some of them –the bull, Europa and the figure leaning forward to “touch” the bull. I believe there might have been original bronze or marble sculptures, even a group work. The bull seems to be semi-three dimensional suggesting a sculpture.  Another possibility is the artist worked on flatter or two dimensional figures and tried to create a three D effect.However from my perspective the figures came from several sources. You can sense this in the negative of the image. It is of course just an opinion.