#mythological characters

[mythologypaintings]

Dance of Mythological Characters and Villagers

Artist: Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640)

Date: 1630-1635

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain

[mythologypaintings]

Venus Brings Healing Herbs to the Wounded Aeneas

Artist: Hendrik Krock (Danish, 1671 – 1738

Date: 1706

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark

Description

In Virgil's Aeneid (Book XII), the goddess Venus heals her son, the Trojan hero Aeneas, after he is wounded by an arrow in battle. She secretly brings Cretan dittany (Dictamnus), a medicinal herb, and adds it to the healer Iapyx’s water to instantly cure the wound and restore his strength, allowing him to return to battle.

[mythologypaintings]

Bacchus, Temperance and Cupid

Artist: Giovanni Maria Bottalla (Italian, 1613–1644)

Date: 1640-1642

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Private Collection

Bottalla was a student of Pietro da Cortona, but temperamentally he was a much more classicising painter than his master, influenced by the art of the High Renaissance, Annibale Carracci's Farnese ceiling and the work of his contemporaries in Rome such as Poussin.

[allegorypaintings]

Omnia Vincit Amor, or The Power of Love in the Three Elements

Artist: Benjamin West (American, 1738–1820)

Date: 1809

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY, United States

Description

"Omnia vincit Amor," (Love triumphs over Everything) is a quotation from Virgil’s Eclogues. Venus, the goddess of love, is shown at the left with her attributes the doves and with her small son, Amor, armed with bow and arrows, clinging to her draperies. A young deity, presumably Hymen, god of marriage, brandishes a flaming torch with his right hand and grasps in his left cords that leash an eagle. The eagle symbolizes all the creatures living in the element Air, a hippocampus stands for those of the Water, and a lion for those on Earth. The fourth element, Fire, is implicit in the goddess herself, in the winged Amores, or little Loves, and most particularly in Hymen’s flaming torch.

[mythologypaintings]

The Triumph of Galatea

Artist: Benedetto Gennari (Italian, 1633-1715)

Date: 1677-1678

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Royal Collection Trust, London, United Kingdom

Description

This canvas comes from a set of four large-scale mythological scenes commissioned by Charles II, which were hung in the King's Dining Room at Windsor Castle 'with three other pictures, one by Tintoretto, the other two, they say, by Titian'. All represent love stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The beautiful sea-nymph Galatea sits naked upon a chariot, borne across a raging sea by winged putti, some of whom are riding dolphins. The Triumph of Galatea was a popular subject in seventeenth-century painting, inspired by Raphael's fresco treatment of it in the Villa Farnesina. Book XIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses tells how Galatea loved the youth Acis, but was vainly loved by the one-eyed giant Polyphemus. After chancing upon the young lovers together, the jealous Polyphemus threw a boulder at Acis and killed him. Here Galatea is pictured fleeing from Polyphemus, and so the painting is not properly a 'triumph'. Nevertheless, there is an air of triumph about Galatea's pose, and the composition resembles Raphael's fresco which shows Galatea's apotheosis, and celebrates beauty and the enduring power of love.

[mythologypaintings]

Calypso Receiving Telemachus and Mentor in the Grotto

Artist: William Hamilton (English, 1751–1801)

Date: 1791

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Private Collection

Description

The story depicted in the present painting is narrated by Homer in The Odyssey. Telemachus, Odysseus's son and Mentor, Odysseus's long-time friend, go on a journey to find out news about Odysseus' whereabouts after he has been missing for twenty years. For seven of those years, he was imprisoned on the nymph Calypso's island, until the gods intervened and forced her to let him go.

When Telemachus and Mentor shipwreck on her island, Calypso is still mourning the loss of her beloved Odysseus. She immediately recognizes the similarity between Odysseus and Telemachus, and knows that he is the son of the hero. She pretends not to know who he is, and tells him that no one is to enter her island.

Telemachus tells her who his father is, and asks for her mercy. Calypso is so impressed by the youth, she offers him a warm greeting and shows him the natural beauty of her island. She reveals to him that his father Odysseus had in fact been to her island, and she laments his having left her broken-hearted. Telemachus regales her with stories of his adventures prior to his landing at her island.

[mythologypaintings]

Prometheus

Artist:Karl Mayer (Austrian, 1810-1876)

Date: 1837

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Austria

Description

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is one of the Titans and a god of fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge and, more generally, civilization.