Tag: Hellenic
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01 Work, Interpretations of Olympian deities, August Groh’s Diana hunting, with footnotes #40
Sold for 5500.00 € in March 2023 The goddess with her entourage hunting a deer that flees into the water on a rocky cliff! Diana is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside, hunters, crossroads, and the Moon. She is equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, and absorbed much of…
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02 Works, Interpretations of Olympian deities, Sir Edward Poynter’s Two Visits to Aesculapius, with footnotes #39
Aesculapius was the Greek god of healing and medicine, and is symbolised by a snake curled around a staff. In a scene taken from a poem by the Elizabethan Thomas Watson… Please follow link for full post
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01 Work, Interpretations of Olympian deities, Jacob de Backer’s Paris Being Admitted to the Bedchamber of Helen, with footnotes #38
Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and considered in Greek myth to be the most beautiful woman in the world. She was married to Menelaus, King of Sparta. When the Trojan prince Paris abducted Helen and carried her off to the city of Troy, the Greeks responded by mounting an attack on the city,…
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01 painting, The amorous game, Italian School, early 18th Century’s Anthony and Cleopatra , with Footnotes #106
Sold for 18,900 EUR in June 2021 Anthony and Cleopatra are arguably the most famous lovers in history. Marcus Antonius of Rome stood at the pinnacle of power, fighting to be the most powerful man in the known world; and Cleopatra VII Philopator was the queen of one ancient civilization, Egypt, and heir to the unmatched cultural…
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01 Painting, Olympian deities, Wilhelm Kray’s Eros ferrying lovers to Cythera, with footnotes # 50
Sold for GBP 6,875 in Jan 2008 In Greek mythology, Eros is the god of lust and love. In the present work, lovers are being taken to Cythera, the celestial island of Aphrodite. Wilhelm Kray ( December 29, 1828 in Berlin – July 29, 1889 in Munich ) was a German portrait , genre and landscape painter…
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06 Photographs, Contemporary Interpretations of Olympian deities, Steven Irwin’s Venus, Ceres, Persephone and Tellus, the Earth Goddesses, with footnotes #34
Venus is a Roman goddess, whose functions encompass love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy… Please follow link for full post
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02 Paintings, Olympian deities, Litvinov Oleg Arkad’yevich’s Diana’s hunts, Part 1 and 2, with footnotes # 49
Diana is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside, hunters, crossroads, and the Moon… Please follow link for full post
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01 Photograph, Contemporary Interpretations of Olympian deities, Nancy Ellison’s mermaid, with footnotes #33
For sale at 7,335 USD in Nov 2023 A mermaid is a marine creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. The first stories appeared in ancient Assyria. Mermaids can be benevolent or beneficent. Nancy Ellison was born…
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04 Works, Contemporary Interpretations of Olympian deities, B A H M A N’s Leda, with footnotes #33
Leda was believed to have been the mother (by Zeus, who had approached and seduced her in the form of a swan) of the twins, Pollux, and of Helen, both of whom hatched from eggs… Please follow link for full post
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01 Work, Olympian deities, Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian’s Venus and Adonis, With Footnotes – #136
Sold for 11,164,000 GBP in December 2022 Venus, as if filled with foreboding about Adonis’s fate, desperately clings to her lover, while he pulls himself free of her embrace, impatient for the hunt and with his hounds straining at the leash. The goddess’s gesture is echoed by that of Cupid, who anxiously watches the lovers’ leave-taking…
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01 Painting, Contemporary Interpretations of Olympian deities, Esther Sarto’s Leda & the Swan, with footnotes #32
Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces and has sex with Leda. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her…
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01 Work, Interpretations of Olympian deities, Giovanni Maria Bottala’s Deucalion and Pyrrha, with footnotes #47
Considering the human race to be irretrievably lost and full of defects, Zeus, the sovereign of the gods, decided to put an end to it. To do so, he caused a flood to drown humanity. Only the couple formed by Deucalion and Pyrrha would be spared, due to their kindness. Zeus advised them to build…
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02 Works, The Art of War, Moretto da Brescia’s Entombment with footnotes
The Greeks believed that it was incredibly important that the dead were treated with respect and that everyone, no matter their social status or wealth, received a proper burial. Once the person had died, their eyes and mouth were closed. The body would be washed, perfumed and wrapped in a long shroud… Please follow link…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Anselm Feuerbach’s The Battle of the Amazons, with footnotes
This dramatic historical painting, teeming with figures, depicts the devastating battle for the city of Troy. According to Homer, the Amazons with their queen Penthesilea came to the aid of the Trojan king Priamos, who had to defend himself against the Greeks under the leadership of king Menelaus. In the battle, Penthesilea is killed by…
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13 Works, The Art of War, Henry Zaidan’s Night Raid, After Franz von Stuck, with footnotes
The enemy launched a surprise assault in the dead of the night. Alma deftly tightens her grip on her trusty sword, her mind becomes laser-focused… Please follow link for full post
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02 Works, The Art of War, Sebastiano Ricci’s Camillus Rescuing Rome from Brennus and Paul Joseph Jamin’s Spoils of the Battle, with footnotes
In the Battle of the Allia, Brennus defeated the Romans and entered Rome itself. He captured the entire city of Rome except for the Capitoline Hill, which was successfully held against them… Please follow link for full post
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01 Work, Interpretations of Olympian deities, THE ART OF WAR, Arturo Michelena’s Penthesilea, with footnotes #50
Penthesilea, daughter of Ares and Otrera, was an Amazon queen who fought and died in the Trojan War. After Hector, the leader of the Trojan army, was killed in the final year of the war, Penthesilea arrived with a small but highly skilled troop of Amazon warriors to help the doomed city against the Greeks.…
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01 Work, The art of War, Pieter Paul Rubens’ The Battle of the Amazons, with Footnotes
For sale for 36 000 € in Jan 2024 The tangle of naked bodies, some mutilated, gives the idea of the extreme violence used in battle and the terrified expressions of the horses are of rare intensity. Their anguished gazes are the most exciting moment of the spectacular composition. The author of this great work…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Georges Rochegrosse’s Andromaque, with footnotes
This is a distinctly surprising work, where the atrocities of war are depicted with raw violence – severed heads, pools of blood, lifeless bodies stretched out on the ground or hanging from the wall – at the same time as candid eroticism, such as Andromache’s swelling bosom: an appealing show of female nudity placed well…
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02 Works, The Art of War, Bernardo Strozzi’s Allegorical Figure, Minerva, with footnotes
During the 1630s, Strozzi painted a number of female figures representing various intellectual and artistic pursuits, reflecting the appeal of such allegories among learned patrons in northern Italy. Recent scholarship has convincingly identified the subject of this painting as Minerva. The Roman goddess of war has put aside her armor for more contemplative pursuits; her…