Edward Burne-Jones
(1634 - 1705)

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, ARA was a British painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, Ford Madox Brown and Holman Hunt. Burne-Jones worked with William Morris as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co in the design of decorative arts. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Burne-Jones

The Wine of Circe
Watercolour and bodycolour on paper
1863 - 1869
Dimensions: 70 cm x 101.5 cm
Private Collection
https://www.eb-j.org/browse-artwork-detail/MTI2MA==

Circe is an enchantress and a minor goddess in ancient Greek mythology and religion. She is either a daughter of the Titan Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate and Aeëtes. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe

 Luca Giordano
(1634 - 1705)
 

Luca Giordano (18 October 1634 – 3 January 1705)[1] was an Italian late-Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Fluent and decorative, he worked successfully in Naples and Rome, Florence, and Venice, before spending a decade in Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Giordano

Perseus turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone
Circa 1660
Oil on canvas
285 x 366 cm
The National Gallery
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/luca-giordano-perseus-turning-phineas-and-his-followers-to-stone

In Greek mythology, Perseus  is the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty. He was, alongside Cadmus and Bellerophon, the greatest Greek hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles. He beheaded the Gorgon Medusa for Polydectes and saved Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus. He was the son of Zeus and the mortal Danaë, as well as the half-brother and great-grandfather of Heracles (as they were both children of Zeus, and Heracles' mother was descended from Perseus). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseus

 

 

 Giuseppe Bottani
(1717 - 1784)

Giuseppe Bottani  was an Italian painter active in the Baroque period. He was born in Cremona, and lived as a boy in Pontremoli. He was sent to study in Florence, where he was a pupil of Vincenzo Meucci and Antonio Puglieschi. He moved to Rome to work under Agostino Masucci, then he returned to Cremona after 1745. In 1769, he was named professor of painting and director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Mantua. He was known for painting landscapes in the style of Gaspard Poussin, and figures in the style of Maratta.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Bottani

Athena appearing to Odysseus to reveal the Island of Ithaca
Before 1775
Oil on canvas
Private collection (sold by Sotheby’s 2012)
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/important-old-master-paintings-n08825/lot.153.html

This painting appears to be a study for:

Athena appearing to Odysseus to reveal the Island of Ithaca
1775
Oil on canvas
Museo Civico, Pavia
https://museicivici.comune.pv.it/site/home/i-musei.html

Piero di Cosimo
(1462 - 1522)
 

Piero di Cosimo  also known as Piero di Lorenzo, was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.
He is most famous for the mythological and allegorical subjects he painted in the late Quattrocento; he is said to have abandoned these to return to religious subjects under the influence of Savonarola, the preacher who exercised a huge sway in Florence in the 1490s, and had a similar effect on Botticelli. The High Renaissance style of the new century had little influence on him, and he retained the straightforward realism of his figures, which combines with an often whimsical treatment of his subjects to create the distinctive mood of his works. 

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_di_Cosimo

A Satyr mourning over a Nymph (The Death of Procris)
Circa 1495
Oil on poplar wood
65 x 184 cm
National Gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/piero-di-cosimo-a-satyr-mourning-over-a-nymph

In Greek mythology, Procris was an Athenian princess as the third daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens and his wife, Praxithea, daughter of Phrasimus and Diogeneia. Homer mentions her in the Odyssey as one of the many dead spirits Odysseus saw in the Underworld, and Sophocles wrote a tragedy called Procris which has been lost, as has a version contained in the Greek Cycle, but at least six different accounts of her story still exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procris

 

 

Maerten van Heemskerck
(1498 - 1574)

Maarten van Heemskerck or Marten Jacobsz Heemskerk van Veen (1 June 1498 - 1 October 1574) was a Dutch portrait and religious painter, who spent most of his career in Haarlem. He was a pupil of Jan van Scorel, and adopted his teacher's Italian-influenced style. He spent the years 1532–6 in Italy. He produced many designs for engravers, and is especially known for his depictions of the Wonders of the World.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maarten_van_Heemskerck

Panorama with the Abduction of Helen Amidst the Wonders of the Ancient World
1535
Oil on canvas
147 x 383 cm
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
https://art.thewalters.org/detail/21286

Heemskerck's interpretation of the narrative, the abduction of Helen, queen of the Greek city-state Sparta, by Paris, a prince of Troy in Asian Minor, an epic that stretches across the ancient world to Rome itself, was influenced by versions of the story that set events among the marvels of heroic achievements of the ancient world. This luminous panorama is one of the most famous Northern landscapes of the 1500s; its array of ancient marvels and evidence of antiquity's greatness provided a picture-puzzle for the viewer, challenging him to locate and identify the pieces. In Greek and Roman literature a rainbow was evidence that the messenger goddess Iris, identified by her multicolored mantle, was on her way to deliver a message. In this story, she alerted Helen's husband Menelaus who was away from home when the abduction took place.

 Giovanni Panini
(1691 - 1765)

Giovanni Paolo Panini or Pannini was an Italian painter and architect who worked in Rome and is primarily known as one of the vedutisti ("view painters"). As a painter, Panini is best known for his vistas of Rome, in which he took a particular interest in the city's antiquities. Among his most famous works are his view of the interior of the Pantheon (on behalf of Francesco Algarotti), and his vedute—paintings of picture galleries containing views of Rome. Most of his works, especially those of ruins, have a fanciful and unreal embellishment characteristic of capriccio themes. In this they resemble the capricci of Marco Ricci. Panini also painted portraits, including one of Pope Benedict XIV.

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Paolo_Panini

The abduction of Helen
Date unknown
Oil on canvas
Private collection 

(Sold by Sotheby’s in 2015)

https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2015/master-paintings-part-i-n09302/lot.95.html

 

Married to King Menelaus of Sparta, the demi-goddess Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and according to Greek mythology, the most beautiful woman in the world.  Panini here depicts the moment in which Helen is abducted by Paris, the episode that would trigger the Trojan War.

 Paul Cézanne
(1839 - 1906)

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne is said to have formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cézanne

Leda and the Swan 

Circa 1880 

Oil on canvas 

59,7 x 74,9 cm 

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

https://collection.barnesfoundation.org/objects/6991/Leda-and-the-Swan-(Leda-au-cygne)/

This picture is unusual in Cézanne's oeuvre for its specific literary subject matter. It represents the story from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which Zeus disguises himself as a swan to seduce Leda, the daughter of King Thestius. This is certainly one of the artist's more overtly sensual paintings: Leda displays herself for the viewer, hip curving dramatically and cheeks flushed, while the swan's beak wraps around her wrist as if taking possession of her. Cézanne made two drawings in preparation for the painting, one of which shows the figure holding a champagne flute.

 Gustave Moreau
(1826 - 1898)
 

Gustave Moreau was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement. Jean Cassou called him "the Symbolist painter par excellence". He was an influential forerunner of symbolism in the visual arts in the 1860s, and at the height of the symbolist movement in the 1890s, he was among the most significant painters. Art historian Robert Delevoy wrote that Moreau "brought symbolist polyvalence to its highest point in Jupiter and Semele." He was a prolific artist who produced over 15,000 paintings, watercolors, and drawings. Moreau painted allegories and traditional biblical and mythological subjects favored by the fine art academies. J. K. Huysmans wrote, "Gustave Moreau has given new freshness to dreary old subjects by a talent both subtle and ample: he has taken myths worn out by the repetitions of centuries and expressed them in a language that is persuasive and lofty, mysterious and new."The female characters from the Bible and mythology that he so frequently depicted came to be regarded by many as the archetypical symbolist woman. His art (and symbolism in general) fell from favor and received little attention in the early 20th century but, beginning in the 1960s and 70s, he has come to be considered among the most paramount of symbolist painters. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Moreau

Oedipus and the Sfinx
1864
Oil on canvas
206 x 104 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437153

 

The legendary Greek prince Oedipus confronts the malevolent Sphinx, who torments travelers with a riddle: What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? Remains of victims who answered incorrectly litter the foreground. (The solution is the human, who crawls as a baby, strides upright in maturity, and uses a cane in old age.) Moreau made his mark with this painting at the Paris Salon of 1864. Despite the growing prominence of depictions of everyday life, he portrayed stories from the Bible, mythology, and his imagination. His otherworldly imagery inspired many younger artists and writers, including Odilon Redon and Oscar Wilde

Odilon Redon
(1840 - 1916)

Odilon Redon was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.
Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, he worked almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography, works referred to as noirs. He started gaining recognition after his drawings were mentioned in the 1884 novel À rebours (Against Nature) by Joris-Karl Huysmans. During the 1890s he began working in pastel and oils, which quickly became his favourite medium, abandoning his previous style of noirs completely after 1900. He also developed a keen interest in Hindu and Buddhist religion and culture, which increasingly showed in his work.
He is perhaps best known today for the "dreamlike" paintings created in the first decade of the 20th century, which were heavily inspired by Japanese art and which, while continuing to take inspiration from nature, heavily flirted with abstraction. His work is considered a precursor to both Dadaism and Surrealism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon

The Cyclops
Circa 1914
Oil on cardboard mounted on panel
65,8 x 52,7 cm
Köller-Müller Museum, Otterloo
https://krollermuller.nl/en/odilon-redon-the-cyclops-1

In this painting, the Cyclops Polyphemus spies on the sleeping Nereid Galathea from behind a tall mountain. The one-eyed giant’s love remains unrequited, as Galathea prefers the river god Acis. The unnaturally large eye is the most conspicuous part of the painting. In Redon’s work, the eye is often an all controlling, independent creature, a symbol of the human soul and of the mysterious, unknown inner world.

 Enough Flemish painters (for now;-)

J. M. W. Turner
(1775 - 1851)
 

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner,was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colourisations, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. He left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, and 30,000 works on paper. He was championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840, and is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner

Ulysses deriding Polyphemus
1829
Oil on canvas
132 x 203 cm
National Gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joseph-mallord-william-turner-ulysses-deriding-polyphemus-homers-odyssey

 

Polyphemus is the one-eyed giant son of Poseidon and Thoosa in Greek mythology, one of the Cyclopes described in Homer's Odyssey. His name means "abounding in songs and legends". Polyphemus first appeared as a savage man-eating giant in the ninth book of the Odyssey. The satyr play of Euripides is dependent on this episode apart from one detail; for comic effect, Polyphemus is made a pederast in the play. Later Classical writers presented him in their poems as heterosexual and linked his name with the nymph Galatea. Often he was portrayed as unsuccessful in these, and as unaware of his disproportionate size and musical failings. In the work of even later authors, however, he is presented as both a successful lover and skilled musician. From the Renaissance on, art and literature reflect all of these interpretations of the giant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphemus

Jacob Jordaens
(1593- 1678)
 

Jacob (Jacques) Jordaens was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer known for his history paintings, genre scenes and portraits. After Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, he was the leading Flemish Baroque painter of his day. Unlike those contemporaries he never travelled abroad to study Italian painting, and his career is marked by an indifference to their intellectual and courtly aspirations. In fact, except for a few short trips to locations elsewhere in the Low Countries, he remained in Antwerp his entire life. As well as being a successful painter, he was a prominent designer of tapestries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Jordaens

Plexippus and Toxeus steal the head of the Caledonian boar from Atalanta, given to her by Meleager
Between 1620 and 1623
Oil on canvas
152 x 240 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/586c368b-922a-4ebb-b7dd-ede4b63cb4c7

In Greek mythology, Meleager  was a hero venerated in his temenos at Calydon in Aetolia. He was already famed as the host of the Calydonian boar hunt in the epic tradition that was reworked by Homer. Meleager is also mentioned as one of the Argonauts.
Atalanta meaning "equal in weight", is a heroine in Greek mythology.
There are two versions of the huntress Atalanta: one from Arcadia, whose parents were Iasus and Clymene and who is primarily known from the tales of the Calydonian boar hunt and the Argonauts; and the other from Boeotia, who is the daughter of King Schoeneus and is primarily noted for her skill in the footrace. In both versions, Atalanta was a local figure allied to the goddess Artemis; in such oral traditions, minor characters were often assigned different names, resulting in minor regional variations.

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meleager
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atalanta

Jan Cossiers 

(1600- 1671)
 

Jan Cossiers was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. Cossiers' earliest works were Caravaggesque genre works depicting low life scenes. Later in his career he painted mostly history and religious subjects as well as portraits. Cossiers was one of the leading painters in Antwerp after Rubens' death in 1640 and one of the most original colorists in 17th-century Flanders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Cossiers

Narcissus
17th century
Oil on canvas
97 x 93 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/narciso/edba34ac-e145-4a3b-a201-c5b3e6a10aae

 

In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia (alternatively Mimas or modern day Karaburun, Izmir) who was known for his beauty. According to Tzetzes, he rejected all romantic advances, eventually falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, staring at it for the remainder of his life. After he died, in his place sprouted a flower bearing his name.
The character of Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, a fixation with oneself. This quality, in turn, contributes to the definition of narcissistic personality disorder, a psychiatric condition marked by grandiosity, excessive need for attention and admiration, and an inability to empathize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_(mythology)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

(1525<>1530 - 1569)
 

Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the Elder was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so-called genre painting); he was a pioneer in making both types of subject the focus in large paintings. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Circa 1558
Oil on canvas mounted on wood
73 x 112 cm
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
https://www.fine-arts-museum.be/nl/de-collectie/pieter-i-bruegel-de-val-van-icarus?artist=bruegel-brueghel-pieter-i-1

 

This is the only known example of Bruegel's use of a scene from mythology, and he bases his figures and landscape quite closely on the myth of Daedalus and his son Icarus as told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses 8, 183–235. The painting which Auden saw was thought until recently to be by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, though it is still believed to be based on a lost original of his. The painting portrays several men and a ship peacefully performing daily activities in a charming landscape. While this occurs, Icarus is visible in the bottom right hand corner of the picture, his legs splayed at absurd angles, drowning in the water. There is also a Flemish proverb (of the sort imaged in other works by Bruegel): "And the farmer continued to plough..." (En de boer ... hij ploegde voort") pointing out the indifference of people to fellow men's suffering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_with_the_Fall_of_Icarus

From the poem “Musee des Beaux Arts “ by W.H. Auden:

 

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

 Herbert James Draper
(1863 - 1920)
 

Herbert James Draper was an English Classicist painter whose career began in the Victorian era and extended through the first two decades of the 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_James_Draper

 

 

 

The Lament for Icarus
1898
Oil on canvas
182 x 155 cm
Tate Britain 

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/draper-the-lament-for-icarus-n01679

 

 Daedalus wept for his son and called the nearest land Icaria (an island southwest of Samos) in the memory of him. Today, the supposed site of his burial on the island bears his name, and the sea near Icaria in which he drowned is called the Icarian Sea. According to scholia on Euripides, Icarus fashioned himself greater than Helios the Sun himself, and the god punished him by directing his powerful rays at him, melting the wax. Afterwards, it was Helios who named the Icarian sea after Icarus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus

 Jacob Peter Gowy
(1610 - 1644<>1664)
Jacob Peter Gouwy or Jacob Peter Gowy was a Flemish Baroque painter of history paintings and portraits. He collaborated with Peter Paul Rubens and spent time in England where he was active as a portrait painter. As the creator of a large picture of a horse painted in England he can be considered one of the pioneers of the genre of portraits of horses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Peter_Gowy

The Fall of Icarus
between 1635 and 1637
Oil on canvas
195 x 180 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-fall-of-icarus/2823dc25-398a-4d88-a4b2-be314065a62d

 Icarus was the son of Daedalus, and father and son were imprisoned by King Minos following Theseus' killing of the Minotaur.
Daedalus came up with a method of escape for Icarus and himself, and with wings attached, they flew from the island of Crete. Icarus was warned about the dangers of the sun on the wax that held the feathers together, but Icarus flew too close to the sun, resulting in Icarus falling to his death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus

William Blake Richmond
(1842 - 1921)

Sir William Blake Richmond KCB, RA, PPRBSA was a British painter, sculptor and a designer of stained glass and mosaic. He is best known for his portrait work and decorative mosaics in St Paul's Cathedral in London. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake_Richmond

Venus and Anchises
1889
Oil on canvas
148 x 296 cm
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/venus-and-anchises

Instigated by Jupiter (Zeus), Venus (Aphrodite) fell in love with Anchises; here she visits him on Mount Ida; their son will be the great hero Aeneas. The artist saw the arrival of Venus as symbolising the coming of spring; blossom and flowers appear as she approaches her lover; her doves fly around her. For the artist, as for the classical writers whom he read so avidly, love is the great creative force in nature and this, rather than just a lovers’ meeting, is the true subject of this picture. Indeed Anchises can only with difficulty be found and perhaps the landscape painting is the finest part of this picture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchises

 

 

 Gabriel François Doyen
(1726 - 1806)

Gabriel François Doyen was a French painter who was born in Paris. He became an artist against his father's wishes, becoming a pupil at the age of twelve of Charles-André van Loo. Making rapid progress, he obtained at twenty the Grand Prix de Rome, and in 1748 set out for Rome. He studied the works of Annibale Carracci, Pietro Berrettini da Cortona, Giulio Romano and Michelangelo, then visited Naples, Bologna and, crucially, Venice. While in the latter city Doyen was greatly influenced by the work of the famous colourists, such as Titian.

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_François_Doyen

Triomphe d'Amphitrite ou La Pêche
1768
Oil on canvas
277 x 253 cm
Palace de Versailles
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010236821

 In ancient Greek mythology, Amphitrite was the goddess of the sea, the queen of the sea, and the wife of Poseidon. She was a daughter of Nereus and Doris (or Oceanus and Tethys). Under the influence of the Olympian pantheon, she became the consort of Poseidon and was later used as a symbolic representation of the sea. Her Roman counterpart is Salacia, a comparatively minor figure, and the goddess of saltwater.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphitrite

Arnold Böcklin
(1827 - 1901)

 

Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss symbolist painter, born in Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin (b. 1802), was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk trade. His mother, Ursula Lippe, was a native of the same city. Arnold studied at the Düsseldorf academy under Schirmer, and became a friend of Anselm Feuerbach. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. Schirmer, who recognized in him a student of exceptional promise, sent him to Antwerp and Brussels, where he copied the works of Flemish and Dutch masters. Böcklin then went to Paris, worked at the Louvre, and painted several landscapes. 

He’s mostly famous for the “Isle of the Dead you can see here: 

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19733288-march-2019-symbolism?page=2#comment_19073152059

Odysseus and Polyphemus
1896
Oil and tempera on panel
66 x 150 cm
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

 

Escaping from the island of the Cyclopes—one-eyed, ill-tempered giants—the hero Odysseus calls back to the shore, taunting the Cyclops Polyphemus, who heaves a boulder after the boat. Unlike Academic colleagues who treated ancient mythology with reverence and solemnity, Böcklin often played up strange, grotesque, and even ridiculous elements of these stories, conjuring a pre-Classical world governed by violence and lust.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arnold_Böcklin_-_Odysseus_and_Polyphemus.jpg

Guillaume-seignac
(1870 - 1924)

 

Guillaume Seignac was a French academic painter born in Rennes in 1870, and died in Paris in 1924. He started training at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he spent 1889 through 1895. He had many teachers there, including Gabriel Ferrier, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and Tony Robert-Fleury.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Seignac

Diane chassant (Diana the Huntress)
Date unknown
Oil on canvas
Private collection

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 Artemis' mythology early in Roman history, including a birth on the island of Delos to parents Jupiter and Latona, and a twin brother, Apollo, though she had an independent origin in Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_(mythology)

 <b>William-Adolphe Bouguereau</b>
(1825 - 1905)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body. During his life, he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work. As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde. By the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art fell out of favor with the public, due in part to changing tastes. In the 1980s, a revival of interest in figure painting led to a rediscovery of Bouguereau and his work. He finished 822 known paintings, but the whereabouts of many are still unknown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William-Adolphe_Bouguereau

Les Oréades

1902

Oil on canvas

236 x 182 cm

Musee d’orsay

https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/les-oreades-153688

The Oreads are the nymphs of the mountains, also known as Orestiads. In Greek mythology, these creatures are led by the Greek Moon goddess of the hunt named Artemis, one of the most venerated ancient Greek deities. In ancient Rome she was known as Diana. Artemis or Diana prefers to stay on the mountainside; that is the reason the Oreads are always her companion. Oreads are lively creatures who hunt wild animals such as boar and birds with their arrows. Under Diana's guidance, the Oreads line themselves behind her in a luminous form. The painting shows the Oreads ascending into the sky while three satyrs watch them, seemingly mystified at the sight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Oréades

Andrea Vaccaro
(1604- 1670)

 

Andrea Vaccaro was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. Vaccaro was in his time one of the most successful painters in Naples, a city then under Spanish rule. Very successful and valued in his lifetime, Vaccaro and his workshop produced many religious works for local patrons as well as for export to Spanish religious orders and noble patrons. He was initially influenced by Caravaggio, in particular in his chiaroscuro and the naturalistic rendering of his figures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Vaccaro

King Midas
1670
Oil on canvas
71 x 54 cm
Private collection
https://www.dorotheum.com/de/l/2556580/

 

The most famous King Midas is popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. This came to be called the golden touch, or the Midas touch. The legends told about this Midas and his father Gordias, credited with founding the Phrygian capital city Gordium and tying the Gordian Knot, indicate that they were believed to have lived sometime in the 2nd millennium BC, well before the Trojan War. However, Homer does not mention Midas or Gordias, while instead mentioning two other Phrygian kings, Mygdon and Otreus. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas

Titian
(1488- 1576)

Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio known in English as Titian painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, 'from Cadore', taken from his native region.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titian

Sisyphus
1548-49
Oil on canvas
237 x 216 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/sisyphus/bb56eb47-052f-4e15-8e46-75a3f18b13ad

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus or Sisyphos was the founder and king of Ephyra (now known as Corinth). Zeus punished him for cheating death twice by forcing him to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down every time it neared the top, repeating this action for eternity. Through the classical influence on modern culture, tasks that are both laborious and futile are therefore described as Sisyphean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus_(Titian)

 Edward Poynter

(1836- 1919)

 

Sir Edward John Poynter, 1st Baronet GCVO, PRA was an English painter, designer, and draughtsman, who served as President of the Royal Academy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Poynter

Orpheus and Eurydice
1862
Oil on canvas
51 x 71 cm
Private collection (sold at Christie’s on 10 Dec 2020 for GBP 437,500)
https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-6290737/?intObjectID=6290737

 

Ancient Greek authors as Strabo and Plutarch note Orpheus's Thracian origins. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music (the usual scene in Orpheus mosaics), his attempt to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the underworld, and his death at the hands of the maenads of Dionysus, who tired of his mourning for his late wife Eurydice. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or alluded to in countless forms of art and popular culture including poetry, film, opera, music, and painting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus

 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
(1796- 1875)

 

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously referenced the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipated the plein-air innovations of Impressionism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste-Camille_Corot

In this painting, the fabled musician Orpheus--who beguiled the Greek gods to allow him to retrieve his beloved wife, who had been fatally bitten by a snake--leads her tenderly from the underworld. In ancient times, it was believed that the deceased continued to exist as spirits, seen here gathered in small groups beneath the delicate trees. Corot, a great music lover, has imbued this work with a sense of melancholy lyricism that hints at the tragic end of the story: Orpheus loses Eurydice forever when he turns to look at her before reaching the world of the living.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus

 Briton Rivière
(1840- 1920)

Briton Rivière RA was a British artist of Huguenot descent. He exhibited a variety of paintings at the Royal Academy, but devoted much of his life to animal paintings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briton_Rivière

Circe and the Friends of Ulysses

1871

Oil on canvas

68,5 x 130 cm

Private collection

Circe is an enchantress and a minor goddess in ancient Greek mythology and religion. She is either a daughter of the Titan Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate and Aeëtes. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals.

The best known of her legends is told in Homer's Odyssey when Odysseus visits her island of Aeaea on the way back from the Trojan War and she changes most of his crew into swine. He manages to persuade her to return them to human shape, lives with her for a year and has sons by her, including Latinus and Telegonus.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe

 George Hitchcock
(1850- 1913)

 

George Hitchcock was an American painter, born in Providence, Rhode Island, and was mostly active in Europe, notably in the Netherlands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hitchcock_(artist)

Calypso
1906
Oil on canvas
111 x 88,9 cm
Indianapolis Museum of Art
http://collection.imamuseum.org/artwork/56225/

Calypso was the sea nymph who saved Odysseus from a shipwreck.

Staying with the same subject, but the next one is not for the faint of heart… It’s by a lesser known painter from my hometown Antwerp.

Theodoor Rombouts
(1597- 1637)

Theodoor Rombouts was a Flemish painter who is mainly known for his Caravaggesque genre scenes depicting lively dramatic gatherings as well as religiously-themed works. He is considered to be the primary and most original representative of Flemish Caravaggism. These Caravaggisti were part of an international movement of European artists who interpreted the work of Caravaggio and the followers of Caravaggio in a personal manner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodoor_Rombouts

Prometheus
Early 17th century
Oil on canvas
154 x 222 cm
Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium)
https://www.fine-arts-museum.be/nl/de-collectie/theodoor-rombouts-prometheus

 Thomas Cole
(1801- 1848

Thomas Cole was an English-American painter known for his landscape and history paintings. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century. Cole's work is known for its romantic portrayal of the American wilderness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cole

Prometheus Bound
1847
Oil on canvas
162 x 243 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
https://art.famsf.org/thomas-cole/prometheus-bound-199728

Prometheus Bound is an 1847 oil painting by American artist Thomas Cole. Prometheus Bound is one of Cole's largest paintings, and like his other major works of the 1840s it was not the result of a commission. It draws from the ancient Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. In the painting, Prometheus is chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus in Scythia. Zeus has punished him for endowing humans with life, knowledge, and specifically for giving humans fire. Each day a raptor comes to feed on Prometheus's liver, which regrows between visits, making Zeus's punishment even more cruel. 

 

 

Edward Burne-Jones
(1833- 1898)

 

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, ARA was a British painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, Ford Madox Brown and Holman Hunt. Burne-Jones worked with William Morris as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co in the design of decorative arts.  

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_Botticelli

The Mirror Of Venus
1898
Oil on canvas
120 x 200 cm
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
https://gulbenkian.pt/museu/en/works_museu/the-mirror-of-venus/

 

Like The Bath of Venus, which also belongs to the Gulbenkian Collection, the composition derives from an illustration intended for The Hill of Venus, part of William Morris’s poem The Earthly Paradise, which was inspired by the medieval legend of Tannhäuser.

 Let’s start the new month with a well known painting:

Sandro Botticelli
(1445- 1510)

 

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi  known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered by the Pre-Raphaelites who stimulated a reappraisal of his work. Since then, his paintings have been seen to represent the linear grace of late Italian Gothic and some Early Renaissance painting, even though they date from the latter half of the Italian Renaissance period. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_Botticelli

The Birth of Venus

Circa 1485

Tempera on canvas

172,5 x 278,5

Palazzo degli Uffizi

https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/birth-of-venus