Greek Mythology
14 posts
Apollo Belvedere
Sculpture · Roman copy after Leochares
The Apollo Belvedere (Roman copy of a Greek bronze, in the Vatican) was for centuries the ideal of classical male beauty, the touchstone Winckelmann built Neoclassical taste around.Crosses Sculpture ×
Bacchus and Ariadne
Painting · Titian
Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne (1523) is a high point of the Venetian Renaissance, the god leaping from his chariot toward Ariadne in a blaze of ultramarine.Crosses Renaissance × Painting × Greek Mythol
Medea about to Kill her Children
Painting · Eugene Delacroix
Delacroix's Medea about to Kill her Children (1838) brings the Greek tragedy into full Romantic register, the sorceress half in shadow at the moment before the act.Crosses Romanticism × Painting × Gre
Apollo and Daphne (Bernini)
Sculpture · Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Bernini's Apollo and Daphne (1625) is the defining Baroque sculpture, marble caught at the instant Daphne turns to laurel to escape the god.Crosses Baroque × Sculpture × Greek Mythology. Reference.
Laocoon and His Sons
Sculpture · Hellenistic Greek (Vatican)
The Laocoon group (Hellenistic, in the Vatican since 1506) is one of the most influential sculptures in Western art, the Trojan priest and his sons crushed by sea serpents.Crosses Sculpture × Greek My
Medusa
Painting · Caravaggio
Caravaggio's Medusa (c. 1597), painted on a ceremonial parade shield, fixes the Gorgon at the instant of decapitation, the scream and serpents rendered with the violent realism that drove the whole Ba
The Cyclops
Oil on panel · Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon painted The Cyclops around 1914. The one-eyed giant Polyphemus rises from behind a hill of flowers, his single eye fixed on the small sleeping figure of the nymph Galatea below him. In Re
Hylas and the Nymphs
Oil on canvas · John William Waterhouse
John William Waterhouse painted Hylas and the Nymphs in 1896. The subject is Greek: Hylas, the young companion of Heracles on the voyage of the Argonauts, goes to fill a pitcher at a forest pool and i
Oedipus and the Sphinx
Oil on canvas · Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau exhibited Oedipus and the Sphinx at the Paris Salon of 1864, and it made his reputation. The painting fixes the moment from Greek myth when Oedipus confronts the Sphinx outside Thebes,
The Birth of Venus
Tempera on canvas · Sandro Botticelli
Painted around 1485 for the Medici circle in Florence, Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus shows the goddess Venus, the Greek Aphrodite, arriving on the shore of Cythera. Born of the sea foam, she stan
A Man Offering Gifts at the Altar of Venus
Stipple engraving · Francesco Bartolozzi
Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815) was among the most celebrated engravers of the eighteenth century. Born in Florence, he settled in London in 1764, became a founding member of the Royal Academy in 176
Pygmalion and Galatea
Painting (oil on canvas) · Jean-Léon Gérôme
Ovid's account of Pygmalion in the Metamorphoses is a single short story embedded in a longer poem about transformation. A sculptor of Cyprus, repulsed by the women of his city, carves an ivory statue
Diana of Versailles
Sculpture (marble, Roman copy of Greek original) · Unknown Roman sculptor after Leochares (4th c. BCE)
The sculpture is a Roman marble of the first or second century CE, copying a Greek bronze attributed to the Athenian sculptor Leochares from around 325 BCE. This double provenance (Greek original, Rom
The Rape of Proserpina
Sculpture (marble) · Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Bernini was twenty-three when he carved the Rape of Proserpina, finished in 1622 for Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The technical achievement that defines the sculpture is the deformation of marble flesh
