life imitates art

art journal. side blog.

[theaphrodisia]

[ achilles dragging the body of hector around the walls of troy, gavin hamilton. ]

— oil on canvas, 1775.

the painting portrays the scene from homer’s iliad, book 22, in which the furious achilles ties the body of the trojan hero hector to his chariot, and drags him around the mighty walls of troy for nine whole days.

having killed patroclus, hector is now aware of his upcoming death at the hands of achilles, who has raked havoc on the trojan battlefield to avenge his beloved. the much awaited duel arrives, and achilles kills hector with the help of the goddess athena. yet still, that did not grant him the satisfaction he hoped to get. so he seeks further humiliation, and ties him to his chariot to parade around with the corpse, defying hector’s last wish for his body to be returned to his family. each morning for nine days at the rise of the sun, he drives his chariot with the body dragging behind it around the walls of troy, while the trojans watch. this act has both enraged and terrified the gods (the earth shook upon hades, the only time the god is shown to feel something) and they demanded it stops.

eventually, king priam, father of hector, does manage to convince achilles to return the body, which appears in the painting unharmed and preserved by aphrodite herself.

the painting shows the trojans lamenting on the right, soldiers and civilians alike. hector’s wife, andromache, appears to have fainted from the sight, surrounding by many others high up on the wall, including the old man priam his father.

the sky looks darkened grey, which might be a reference to the anger of the gods, who were strictly against such acts.

[theaphrodisia]

[ omnia vanitas (all is vanity), william dyce. ]

— oil on canvas, 1848.

the romanic painting shows a young woman, mary magdalene, staring away from the viewer. the skull on which she rests her hand - a symbol of mary magdalene - is used to remind of mortality, or death.

Dyce uses the religious icon to allude to his interest in the victorian concept of the ‘fallen woman’, a woman who was a victim to prostitution or female promiscuity. the artist would go on to join the liberal politician william ewart gladstone in his campaign to redeem those fallen women around the time of this painting.

the painting now belongs to the royal academy of arts.

[theaphrodisia]

[ the death of procris, benjamin west. ]

— oil on canvas, 1770 (retouched in 1803).

the painting portrays procris dying upon being accidentally shot by her husband, cephalus, as he’d mistaken her for a wild animal during his hunt.

procris was a princess of athens, married to cephalus, and had a long history and much cause to believe her husband was unfaithful as he often left for hunting, especially when a servant told her of what they’d heard one time. the servant told her that they’d heard her husband call for either nephele, aura, or zephyr to come into his lap and relieve him of the heat. his words, though innocent enough -to ask for the mercy of wind after the strain of the hunt- were misinterpreted by the servant, and conveyed to the princess more romantically than they actually were.

hoping to catch her husband in his infidelity, she followed him into the forest one day, moving between the thickets. cephalus, unaware, thought the noise came from an animal lurking, and so he aimed at it, and surely enough struck it with the javelin that never missed, only to find moments later that it was his wife who he had struck.

even as she was dying, cephalus still comforted her that he was faithful, and explained what the servant had heard, and so she died peacefully in his arms.

the painting is now in the Art Institution of Chicago.

[chiildoflibra]

[ vestal virgin with wreath of ivy, carl friedrich deckler. ]

— oil on canvas, 1870.

this painting portrays one of the six vestal virgins, a very important pillar in ancient roman society.

the vestal virgins were six virgins chosen with utmost care to be priestesses of the goddess vesta, the roman equivalent of hestia, goddess of family and the hearth. in her temple, their duties included the careful tending to the hearth, the sacred fire on which the entirety of the roman empire depended.

six girls, aged six to ten, were chosen amongst many in the setting of a public lot drawing. afterwards, they’re taken to the roman forum by the temple of vesta to swear an oath of 30 years of chastity, compensated by many rights and privileges the other women of the era did not have. they spent those 30 years tending to the sacred fire in the hearth - lit in march and maintained all the way to the following year. if the fire was put out or any irregularities were to occur, it was a sign of grave sin, usually the unchastity of one of the virgins, or perhaps an assault on one of them, and the whole empire was at risk.

due to their most sacred role, they were held in the highest levels of respect, given many a privilege like owing an estate or testifying in court, and any offense on them was nearly unthinkable. a sight of a vestal virgin on the way of a man led to execution was almost a certain sign of his freedom, if proven coincidental. and in the case that a virgin is found unchaste, willingly, that is, her execution was by bricking and starvation, as the bloodshed of those virgins was not allowed.

this tradition survived for a thousand years, surviving even the fluctuations of the roman empire, and even has some influence on christianity after the fall.

[chiildoflibra]

[ leda and the swan, heinrich hofmann. ]

— oil on canvas, 1886.

the painting portrays a scene in greek mythology in which zeus takes the form of an injured swan to gain the affection of leda, a mortal woman who captured his attention.

the oblivious leda finds the swan and nurses it back into health. in the meantime, a bound forms between them, just as the god had intended. the swan continues to be leda’s pet, until in a fateful day, it reveals itself to be the king of gods and shares the couch of leda. on that self same night, leda lies with her husband, to later be pregnant with the twins castor and pollux, better known as the dioscuri, or the twins of gemini.

the painting portrays the moments before their union, in which the swan comes to leda not as pet, but as a lover.

[chiildoflibra]

[ the vision of endymion, sir edward john poynter. ]

— oil on canvas, 1902.

the painting is based around the greek myth of the young shepherd endymion (portrayed sleeping in the bottom of the painting) who fell in love with the goddess artemis (also known as diana, selene, goddess of the moon).

he wished for eternal sleep so that his lover goddess would visit him in his dreams, the eternal sleep is symbolized in the work as the red poppies on the sides of the painting. he sleeps, and the goddess descends in her drapery flowing about her, which adds the erotic nature to the dream-like state of the goddess.