#oreads

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825–1905) The Oreads, 1902

[heaveninawildflower]

August Oreads taken from ‘The Faery Calendar’ (1920).

Woodcut print by Bernard Sleigh.

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2023.

[hecatesdelights]

Oreads, Mountain Nymphs in Greek Mythology

[thefugitivesaint]

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), 'Oreads', ''Salon of 1902'' Source

[marianas-art-world]

NYMPHS

Oreads | the mountain-dwelling nymphs

[didoofcarthage]

Oreads by Annie Louisa Swynnerton. British, exhibited 1907. Oil on canvas. Tate Collection. 

From the Tate: 

This probably illustrates a scene in the ancient Greek poem Dionysiaca. Zeus, god of the sky, has flooded the earth. The oreads (mountain spirits) are forced to seek safety on higher ground. A rainbow suggests the storm is ending, although we are left to wonder if the figure glimpsed on the lower right will survive.

In 1922 Annie Swynnerton became the first woman to be elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in over 150 years. Swynnerton was also involved with the struggle for women’s rights. Some of her sitters and supporters were leading figures in the suffrage movement.

[snaefellsjokull]

Oreads - Annie Louisa Swynnerton

happy pride month my dudes

[chthonicdivinebard]

The hymn [Fifth Homeric Hymn] begins with a description of the power of Aphrodite over the world of animals, mortals, and the Gods. Only the three virgins, Artemis, Athena, and Hestia, are immune to Her. She even causes Zeus to mingle in love with mortal women. To counter Her power to do this (and to mock Her victim after the fact), Zeus casts a "sweet desire" into Aphrodite to make Her join with a mortal, the "Godlike Anchises," of whom She then becomes terribly enamored. But first She repairs to Her sanctuary in Cyprus to be washed and anointed with oil and perfumed with ambrosia and dressed and decorated with gold by the Graces. She then flies to Mount Ida, near Troy, a great center for the worship of Aphrodite; there were many shrines on its rocky slopes. Animals fawn on Her, but She casts a love spell and they go off, playing in pairs (this scene seems to echo the scene with Circe in the "Odyssey".) She finds Anchises alone, playing thrillingly on his lyre. (The shepherd's hut and the rest are part of the liminal or marginal locale, outside the usual realm of houses and fields, where unusual events can be expected.) Aphrodite stands before him "in the form and size of a young virgin" in a robe that was "brighter than a fire-flash, and She had on spiral ringlets, and bright ornaments, and necklaces around Her delicate neck that were very beautiful and lovely and golden and finely wrought, shining like the moon on Her delicate breasts, and astonishing." Love gripped Anchises, who said that She must must be a Goddess or one of the Graces or a mountain nymph, that he would build Her a temple, and that She should in turn make his progeny flourish and his age great. (His response clearly parallels that of Odysseus when he meets Nausicaa- whom he surely did not regard as a Goddess- and both responses would seem to illustrate the code of courtship and amatory flattery.) Aphrodite answers that She is the daughter of the king of nearby Phrygia, speaks Trojan because of Her Trojan nurse, and has been caught up from Her dancing round and whisked away to Mount Ida by Hermes, who has told Her She would be Anchises' lawful wife, bearing him "splendid babies." She begs to be presented to his family "as a virgin (unbroken) and unexperienced in love," and that Her own family be informed, so that the proper dowry of gold and garments can be provided, as well as a desirable wedding feast. She throws "sweet desire" into Anchises. (Note that the idom here is the same one used of Zeus, with its implication of acting on an object, as contrasted with the usual Aphrodite action of entering into someone and so arousing passion within them.) Anchises is seized by love and declares that nothing can stop them from making love now, even if they have to go to Hades as a result. Aphrodite follows, Her eyes lowered, to Anchises' couch of bear and lion skins, and "first he took the bright ornaments from Her body, brooches and spiral ringlets and flower-like necklaces. He loosened Her beautiful clothes and Her girdle and put them on a silver chair...and slept, a mortal, with an immortal Goddess, not knowing what he did." He eventually falls asleep. Awakened in the late afternoon by Aphrodite, he finds Her before him in undisguised and divine beauty, "and Her head touched the well-hewn rooftree. Beauty shone from Her cheeks." Anchises is terrified and, turning away, asks that he not be made impotent. She reassures him and tells the story of Ganymede, who was granted immortality because of His beauty; but She tells also of Dawn, who forgot to request youth for Her lover, Tithonus, along with eternal life..."I would not want you to be among the immortals like that, and live forever." Yet there is no suggestion- as there would be if another Queen of Heaven were involved- of Her slaying Anchises for having slept with Her, or of having him slain, or of his being slain through the jealousy of another divinity. Her main concern is for their child, whom She promises to have brought up well by the ambrosia-eating nymphs. (The model of being raised by the nymphs may be of Phrygian origin.) This son of theirs, the future Aeneas, will be returned in his fifth year and will rule among the Trojans. But Her second and almost equal concern is about having slept with a mortal; She fears mockery from Her fellow Olympians. Thus She enjoins Anchises to declare to all that the child's mother was a "flower-like nymph," for otherwise he will be struck down by one of Zeus' thunderbolts. (There is a special irony here, since it was Zeus who got Her involved with Anchises in the first place and would thus be well aware of Her visit and its outcome.)

“The Meaning of Aphrodite” by Paul Friedrich (p 66-8)