Thursday, November 29, 2012

LIGHTNING BOLTS, ENCHANTED ISLES... PART TWO

"Mortals worshipped the gods and the gods honored Mother Earth.  They all had sprung from her, for she was the beginning of all life."... Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire, Book of Greek Myths, 1962
 

Ordinary men in ancient Greek times did their best to avoid speaking of Hades, brother of Zeus and Poseidon...


This was not because he was particularly cruel.  It certainly wasn't because he ruled the hidden treasures of the earth, its gold and silver and the minerals which made men rich.  (He was sometimes called "Pluto" from a word meaning "riches".)  And he was honored by farmers for bringing them agricultural wealth...
Gian Lorenzo Bernini: The Abduction of Proserpina


But Hades was also Lord of the Underworld, the grim place where shades of the dead journey after this life-- the righteous to the blissful Elysian Fields, the ordinary souls who were just as often good as they were bad to the monotony of the Asphodel Meadows where they had no memory of their earthly existence, the wicked to the pit of Tartarus and eternal suffering.  And it was for this reason that men trembled at the mention of his name and that few dared swear oaths invoking his wrath...


Greeks told few stories in which Hades left his gloomy domain.  One occasionally told tale suggested he left to receive treatment for an arrow wound inflicted upon him by the hero Heracles (Hercules).  But it was Hades' abduction of Persephone from the land of the living to become his queen that was known throughout Greece...


Centuries later, Gian Lorenzo Bernini captured the drama of this world-altering event in a work finally completed in 1625.  The sculptor was a versatile artist-- known to us today for his role in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture in addition to stints as a painter and playwright.  Deeply religious, Bernini used light and shadow to intensify the spiritual experience of those who viewed his work.  Few people can look at his sculpture and not be amazed by his ability to create a sense of fluid motion from stone. 

Tintoretto: Vulcan Surprises Venus and Mars

Critics tell us his Rape of Proserpina (Persephone) unfolds as a narrative in three acts.  From the left, we see the struggle and ultimately futile resistance of Demeter's daughter.  A frontal view shows us Hades entering the underworld with his subdued bride-to-be.  Looking at the sculpture from the right reveals the aftermath of abduction: the tears of a goddess and the inevitability of her future in the darkness of a realm guarded by Cerberus, the three-headed dog who sees that none save his master enter or exit the Underworld...


A sense of humor helps in theological matters and the Greeks likely applied theirs in choosing Hephaestus as the husband of Aphrodite. The personification of flawless female beauty found herself wedded to the least handsome or attractive god living on Mount Olympus-- a deity lame, barrel-chested, and sweaty from physical labor.  In earliest times, Hephaestus was a fire god whose cult arose on the volcanic island of Lemnos.  He came to personify beneficial fire as a celestial blacksmith who made the lives of gods more beautiful and the lives of mortals more tolerable as a teacher of mechanical arts...
Roman copy from a Greek original:
Ares Ludovisi


Hephaestus was not lame at his birth but became so almost immediately.  The son of Zeus and Hera, his ugliness so horrified his mother that she tossed him to earth from Olympus shortly after he took his first breath.  He was adopted by the sea-goddesses Thetis and Eurynome.  Myth tells us he eventually exacted revenge on Hera.  Biding time, Hephaestus let years pass before he crafted a golden throne as a gift for his not-so-loving mother.  Delighted at the throne's beauty, Hera sat on it.  Invisible bands sprang forth and clamped her down.  No other Immortal had the knowledge or cunning to release the Queen of Gods.  After a few fistfights with his divine brothers, an undefeated Hephaestus set Hera free-- after Zeus agreed to give him Aphrodite as his bride.  Oddly enough, after Hephaestus had his revenge, he became Hera's most loyal son, never hesitating to step between her and his father when Zeus raised his hand in anger...


One might expect Aphrodite had no desire to marry Hephaestus.  She didn't, taking the god of war as her lover.  Ares commanded the least respect among his fellow divine beings and mortals.  Brutal and savage, he was a vain and arrogant coward.  His father Zeus calls him a whiner and a double-faced liar in the Iliad and says he would gladly cast him from the heavens if it were not for the fact Ares was his son.  His cult merged with that of Mars after Rome conquered Greece and brought her gods home with them.  But the ancient Roman god was held in high regard in the Latin world, second only to Jupiter/Zeus in importance.  His original duties were to protect fields and farmers, using military force only to secure peace and prosperity.  Our illustration, Ares Ludovisi, is a Roman copy of a Greek original dating to circa 320 BCE...
Jean Boulogne: The Flying Mercury

 
[We should note the warlike Spartans honored Ares greatly.  Some classical writers say they even honored him with human sacrifices but these claims may have been made to cement opposition against them.  Archaeologists have found no firm evidence of human sacrifice as a common practice in ancient Greece although some myths suggest it took place in very olden times.  For the most part, Greeks and later Romans shuddered at the mere thought of either human sacrifice or cannibalism.]

 
Popular opinion held Hermes in far higher regard than it did his bellicose brother.  Our illustration, Giovanni da Bologna's The Flying Mercury, ranks among the better known sculptures completed in 1580.  Most people recognize it if only because it inspired the trademark for the FTD florist network.  Hermes aka Mercury in Rome can be found in crossword puzzles asking for a 6 letter messenger of the gods.  He was far more-- the patron of travelers and protector of thieves, the divine sponsor for inventors and poets and athletes, the guide for souls of the dead into the underworld.  This last would be appropriate for some myths carry a hint that he was once, early in his career, a god of the twilight...
Bas relief at Eleusis: Demeter, Persephone,
and Triptolemus


Mythologists believe Hermes' cult originated in Thrace, an area that is now the extreme northeastern corner of Greece and the south-central part of Bulgaria, as a protector of shepherds and their flocks and simple huts.  He later became the guardian of travelers (and commerce, by extension, since few people wandered the roads in ancient times unless they had business to conduct).  Since Hermes came to be associated with profit, he also kept a kindly eye on gamblers and others involved in risky ventures...


Jean Boulougne, sometimes called Giovanni da Bologna, was a Frenchman influenced by Michelangelo.  He developed his own Mannerist style that emphasized elegance, beauty, and refined surfaces while downplaying the emotional.  He grew rich thanks to the patronage of the Church and the Medici banking family.  The Medicis were so afraid he would go to work for Hapsburgs in Spain or Austria that they forbade him to leave Florence, effectively making him a prisoner in a very golden and very luxurious cage...


Winter came into the world as one of the earth-shattering consequences we mentioned earlier in connection with Hades' abduction of Persephone.  This was because Demeter was Persephone's mother and Demeter was the beloved goddess who nourished the crops of the earth and made its fields fertile...
Amphora: Dionysus and Ariadne
 

Demeter wandered the earth, half mad with grief, searching for her lost daughter who had vanished without a trace.  She heard Persephone's cries for help since they were loud enough to reach the heights of Mount Olympus.  But no one seemed to have any useful information until Hecate, goddess of magic and crosswords, advised her to demand answers of Helios, the Sun god.  He finally admitted that Zeus had agreed to give Persephone to his brother Hades to become his wife.  Unfortunately, neither girl nor mother was consulted...


Zeus demonstrated fraternal loyalty and was not inclined to ask his sibling to give up his bride.  Utterly inconsolable, Demeter abandoned Olympus, going to live at her temple at Eleusis.  Crops withered and the winds grew cold as Demeter's tears became more bitter.  One by one, every god, even the vain and cowardly Ares, traveled to Eleusis to plead with her to show mercy to the dying earth and its creatures...

 
The solution to this cosmic disaster became part of the Mysteries of Eleusis, a scene of which is depicted in a bas relief, dating to about 440 BCE, from the temple in that town.  Hades eventually relented and returned Persephone to her mother.  But since his wife had eaten a pomegranate and since six of its seeds remained in her teeth, Hades had claim to her company for six months of the year.  And for this reason we have autumn and winter while Demeter grieves the temporary loss of her daughter each year...


Dionysus, the wine god, had his own connection to the Mystery Religions.  Followers of his cults entranced themselves, drunk or drugged, seeking liberation from the drudgery of ordinary life or the pain they felt daily.  It is no surprise many of his worshippers were slaves and women given the status of both in ancient times.  But he had believers from among the wealthy classes who felt trapped by social constraints.  In a sense, he was a democratic god who closed the doors to liberation to none who accepted the freedom he offered...
Guido Renaldi: Hercules Slays The Hydra


Our illustration is a decorated amphora dating to around 525 BCE and shows Dionysus in the company of his wife Ariadne.  Her name means "most holy" and some scholars, including Robert Graves, believe she was originally the Great Goddess of Crete whose province was to embody the entire Earth, fertility, and motherhood...

 
Early Christianity benefitted from the widespread cult of Dionysus who took on a Greek form in Thrace after borrowing traits from the Cretan deity Zagreus, the Phoenician god Sabazius, and the Lydian divinity Bassareus.  Missionaries spreading the gospel of the new messiah had but to retell the story of Jesus transforming water into wine and speak of the Nazarene's message that all men and women were brothers and sisters, each a uniquely precious soul loved by the One God who made all things... 


Not all, of course, embraced Dionysus...


 
Pentheus, king of Thebes and whose name means "Man of Sorrows", was a puritanical soul who had been warned by the blind seer Tiresias to accept the rule of Dionysus lest his mother and sister be covered in his blood.  He didn't listen...

The great strength of Greek myths which has allowed them to endure for century after century is their humanity.  Unlike the deities of many other lands, the Greek gods looked like men and women, only more perfectly so.  They were not half hippopotamus or half hawk or a giant snake demanding the burned bodies of babies as sacrifices.  And the Greeks told rousing tales of heroes, most of them sons of an immortal god and a mortal woman, who appeared at the very last minute of mankind's darkest hour on the backs of flying horses to do battle with titanic monsters bent on utter destruction...


D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths:
The Family Tree of Olympus

Heracles was one of the most popular heroes in Greece.  Romans called him Hercules and they too celebrated his strength and courage.  We see him here in Hercules Slays The Hydra, a 1620 painting by Guido Reni, which takes as its inspiration the second of twelve "Labors" imposed upon him as penance for killing his own sons after Hera drove him to madness.  Truth be told, Hera wanted the nine-headed serpent with poisonous breath to kill Heracles simply because he was one of the many sons of mortal women fathered by her philandering husband-brother Zeus...


Guido Reni, our painter, was born in 1575 to a family of musicians living in Bologna but was apprenticed at the age of nine to Flemish painter Denys Calvaert who found a new home in Italy after leaving his native Antwerp.  Both master and apprentice belonged to the Baroque school of painting-- as did Peter Paul Rubens.  These artists utilized clear detail and exaggerated motion to create the drama and tension.  Many Baroque artists were deeply religious men-- like Calvaert and Reni-- whose paintings of Biblical scenes hint at the ecstasy born of faith...

Even when these Greek heroes were not demigods and only mortal men like Odysseus, who may or may not have actually once lived as King of Ithaca, they know lives touched by magic.  Odysseus knew the horror of ten years of war at Troy and felt the pain of yet ten more years of wandering as he tried to find his way back home to his beloved queen Penelope.  Along the way, he encountered deadly singing sirens, a man-eating Cyclops, and a most lovely sorceress who bade him dally with her on her enchanted isle... 


Great was his hardship, long was his journey but no other man traveled the same roads he traveled.  And no other man, save Odysseus, earned quite the same degree of chaste affection from Athena who first sends him on his wanderings as punishment for desecrating her temple and then comes to admire his courage and quick wit as he faces all the woe heaven can hurl at him...

 
Alfred Drury: Circe


 

THE MARKETPLACE

One very easy and inexpensive way to build a collection of work by some of today's finest painters, sculptors, and photographers:  Greeting cards from Fine Art America. 

Even easier: browse the Louis R Nugent gallery at Fine Art America.  Choose from 250+ unique ideas for home and office decor or holiday and birthday cards for yourself or a special someone who deserves something extraordinary.  Individual cards cost less than $5.  Wall prints from $22.
http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/
 
Louis Nugent: Carlsbad Caverns
 
Follow and Like Louis R Nugent Photography on Facebook @ louisnugent22.
 

Fine Art America now features painting, drawings, and photographs by sixteen artists who celebrate the majestic and uncompromising landscapes, settlements, people, plants, and animals of West Texas.
http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html
 

Fine Arts America now features  work celebrating the mysterious and lovely Bayou State of Louisiana and its unique lifestyle:
 
CREDITS

Note: All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia, without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: Circe from http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/drury/50.html; information about the Greek gods, goddesses, and their cults from the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, London, 1959; critical assessment of Bernini's The Rape of Proserpina from http://maitaly.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/bernini-galleria-borghese-the-rape-of-persephone/; the family tree of Olympus from D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, New York, 1962

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Thanksgiving Week

 *** Note:  This edition appears early due to holiday commitments.***


My readers stateside celebrate Thanksgiving this week.  For readers overseas who are unfamiliar with the tradition, the holiday has its roots in a 1621 celebration by colonists at Plymouth, Massachusetts who wished to give thanks to Providence while enjoying a bountiful harvest...


Michael Flood: Three Trees at Sunset
Steve Bailey: Desert Outlook
 

We Americans tend to rush ourselves at this unofficial beginning of the winter's season holidays celebrating the gradual return of the sun, the birth of prophets, and miracles in the face of oppression... 


Ashley Mann: The Old Window
Chandra Henne: Casa Grande From Behind
Linda Cox: Midnight In The Garden
 

This week, I hope to share a few minutes of your time with a visit to a group of painters and photographers... 


Jason Tricktop Matthews: Trooper 2
Jeniffer Stapher-Thomas: The Moon, The Mountains, Cacti, A Cat
 

Each belongs to the West Texas group of Fine Art America (http://fineartamerica.com/), a group I am privileged to host...


Paula Loftin: The Cowboy
Karen Slagle: The Heavens Declare The Glory Of God
Ken Brown Pioneer: Oil Boom or Bust
 

These images have been selected from the West Texas group itself and portfolios of the artists.  My sole regret in offering them to you for your perusal is that they just hint at the variety of work created by each group member... 


Suzanne Guirard Theis: The Plains of Texas
Judi Bagwell: Jubilance
Karen Boudreaux: Courthouse Roof Silhouette 1
 

Feel free to take a break from holiday hustle and bustle by following the link to the group in The Marketplace section below... 


Joe Jake Pratt: The Ascension
David Pike: Windmill at Dust
 

Happy Holidays!  Next week we turn our attention once again to the gods and the artists who help us enjoy their myths...   

 

Louis Nugent: Agave lechuguilla with Opuntia engelmanni
 

 THE MARKETPLACE

One very easy and inexpensive way to build a collection of work by some of today's finest painters, sculptors, and photographers:  Greeting cards from Fine Art America. 

Even easier: browse the Louis Nugent gallery at Fine Art America.  Choose from 250+ unique ideas for home and office decor or holiday and birthday cards for yourself or a special someone who deserves something extraordinary.  Individual cards cost less than $5.  Wall prints from $22.

http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/

Louis Nugent: The Bluff
 
Follow and Like Louis R Nugent Photography on Facebook @ louisnugent22.

 

Fine Art America now features painting, drawings, and photographs by sixteen artists who celebrate the majestic and uncompromising landscapes, settlements, people, plants, and animals of West Texas.

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html

 
Fine Arts America now features  work celebrating the mysterious and lovely Bayou State of Louisiana and its unique lifestyle:

 

 

CREDITS

Note: All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia, without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: all images from the Fine Art America portfolios of Michael Flood, Steve Bailey, Ashley Mann, Chandra Henne, Jason Tricktop Matthews, Jeniffer Stapher-Thomas, Paula Loftin, Karen Slagle, Linda Cox, Suzanne Guirard Theis, Judi Bagwell, Karen Boudreaux, Joe Jake Pratt, David Pratt, Ken Brown Pioneer, and Louis R Nugent.  All images remain property of the individual artists listed above and are used here solely to familiarize readers of this blog with their work.     

Thursday, November 15, 2012

LIGHTNING BOLTS, ENCHANTED ISLES... PART ONE


"In olden times, when men still worshipped ugly idols, there lived in the land of Greece a folk of shepherds and herdsmen who cherished light and beauty."... Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire, Book of Greek Myths, 1962


Fortunate is the child who has sat, on a rainy afternoon in a warm cozy house, with Ingri and Edgar Parin Daulaire's gentle retelling of ancient Greek myths about Zeus and his fractious family and vain, foolish, and sometimes heroic mortals who worshipped them...


Historians and linguists make it clear the "adult version" of these tales have a sometime darker side because the Greeks made their gods in the image of men.  It took very little to provoke an angry or annoyed Olympian into inflicting punishments so grisly that even a sadist would cringe at their vengeance...


Zeus, wielder of thunderbolts, takes aim at a target in this
illustration from Alfred Church's Stories of the Greek Tragedians  

The humanity of these gods made them particularly attractive to artists both in classical times and in the years following the Renaissance.  (Medieval artists did not ignore the Greco-Roman heritage but were far more dependent on the Church's approval and the patronage of noblemen than in a time when the power of organized religion was fading and wealthy merchants of common birth looked to claim a higher social status.)


Zeus sat on the highest throne on cloud-covered Mount Olympus as befitted the King of Gods and Men.  As the Greeks became more sophisticated and philosophical, the old stories of a philandering husband with an eye for pretty nymphs and lovely mortals gave way to a more dignified deity.  He assumed qualities of omniscience and omnipotence and demanded justice for the indigent and those powerless against earthly tyrants. We see him in this illustration from Alfred Church's Stories of the Greek Tragedians (1879) in the way early Greeks saw him: god of the sky, lord of the wind, wielder of lightning, giver and taker of rain...
Hera, as both wife and sister of Zeus, was
part of the ancient tradition of divine couples
related by birth and united by desire.


Residents living near the river Theris in Crete, if asked by curious travelers, would point to the exact spot where Zeus consummated his marriage to Hera.  The country folk who toiled near Mount Cithaeron disputed this bold Cretan claim to local fame, insisting he first lay with her on the crags of their mountain.  It was a stormy union despite the fact Hera was Zeus' sister and daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea.  Despite constant bickering and his constant need to bed any pretty girl unable to outrun him, Zeus adored Hera.  Mortal men likely first knelt before her as a sky goddess in a cult that rivaled that of Zeus.  In time, she like her brother, evolved into a more august deity and became the personification of all that is Woman and the protector of marriage.  Peacocks, those vain and flashy and noisy birds, were sacred to Hera, seen here in a Roman copy of a Greek statue chiseled between 450 and 400 BCE...



When I was much younger and first starting to learn about Art and Myth, it was common for writers to disparage anonymous Roman artisans who copied Greek statues and say the grace and beauty found in Athens failed to make its way to the Italian peninsula.  To some extent, this is true-- Roman copies strike us as colder and more formal.  But these qualities tell us that those who spoke Latin were a purposeful people whose business it was to get things done.  Appreciative of beauty, the Romans recognized it could also be used to create a sense of power and destiny...
Athena, in her role as a war-goddess,
commanded far more respect than did
Ares.  She was a strategist who sought
victory with the lowest possible loss of
life and the least destruction of property
necessary.  She craved peace for its
gifts of prosperity and comfort.


Power and destiny can be seen in a Roman version of the Greek sculptor Phidias' vision of Athena, known as Minerva in the Latin world.  She transformed herself into the ultimate warrior goddess  but desired a peaceful world above all.  Athena embodied the quality of prudent intelligence which allowed men to live in harmony, to sculpt and build, to meet in assemblies and find solutions to problems.


Artemis-- another powerful female figure-- ruled the forests and the hunt.  Early Greeks saw her as the Moon Goddess to her brother Apollo's Sun God.  Over time, Selene and Helios took over these functions to some extent.  One of the most horrific Greek myths tells the story of Actaeon.  This unfortunate hunter stumbled across Artemis bathing.  It mattered not that his transgression was accidental.  Actaeon had seen her nakedness.  He found himself transformed into a stag to be torn apart by his own dogs...


Titian, the most important member of the 16th Century Venetian school of painting, told another myth associated with Artemis in his Diana and Callisto, painted 1556-1559.  (In Rome, Artemis became Diana in the same way Zeus transformed into Jupiter and Hera into Juno.)  The painting shows the moment Artemis learns her handmaiden is pregnant with Zeus' child.  Expelled from Artemis' circle, Callisto gave birth to a son.  Hera, more angry with her husband than with his playmate, transformed the unlucky Callisto into a bear, hoping her son Arcas would kill his own mother while he hunted.  Zeus intervened and placed Callisto and her son in the heavens, safely from the wrath of either his wife Hera or daughter Artemis,  as the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor...
Artemis, goddess of the Moon and of the hunt, bathes with her
attendants in Titian's Diana and Calisto


[Depending on where a person lived, the story of how Zeus impregnated Callisto varied.  One version said he took on the appearance of Artemis and kissed the handmaiden as they swam nude.  Flattered to think the goddess thought her beautiful, Callisto joyously yielded her virtue.]


Contemporary students of the art of the High Renaissance often echo praise heaped on Tiziano Cecelli by his contemporaries: a canvas painted by Titian might be a landscape or a portrait or a scene from pagan myths or a Biblical story.  As a painter, he showed a lifelong fascination with color in the same way other painters explore light.  A portrait by Titian revealed subtle emotions in his subjects such as the resolute weariness betrayed  by Emperor Charles V when he posed as a Christian knight on horseback.   Titian, or "da Cadore" as many called him during his lifetime, is said to have found models among Venetian courtesans.  However, one woman who posed for him among the women he loved most deeply-- his daughter Lavinia.  After Titian's wife died, his sister Orsa took over the management of his household.  Lavinia assumed these duties upon her aunt's death...


Painter John Waterhouse tells the story of how the
laurel tree came to be in a Pre-Raphaelite inspired
Apollo and Daphne.

John Waterhouse painted a scene taken from the myths about Artemis' brother in 1908.  Apollo and Daphne follows the style of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of poets and painters and critics formed in 1848, the year before Waterhouse's birth in Italy to English parents.  Although the Brotherhood had long since disbanded and its tenets were no longer artistically fashionable when Waterhouse began painting scenes from mythology, he shared the Pre-Raphaelite rejection of the Mannerist style which followed Michelangelo and Raphael.  He hoped to continue their "reforming" of Art by rejecting, like the Brotherhood, static classic poses and overly elegant compositions...


Insulting Eros (Cupid) proved to be Apollo's undoing in matters of the heart after the son of Aphrodite took his bow and let fly two special arrows towards Apollo and the beautiful nymph Daphne.  Struck by a gold-tipped arrow, the god burned with desire for Daphne.  The lead-tipped arrow piercing her heart filled her with absolute repulsion at the sight of Apollo and she fled in terror.  Daphne called out to her father, a minor river god, for help and was transformed into a laurel.  Grief-stricken, Apollo decreed the tree would be forever sacred to him...
Poseidon, god of the sea, grasps his earth-shattering trident in a
Corinthian plaque dating to over 500 years before the birth of Jesus.


Historians of myth write that Apollo-- like the other Olympians-- was a complex figure; his cult was -- also like the cults of other Greek gods-- the result of fusion with the cults of deities from other Mediterranean and Near East cultures.  Above all, Apollo was the god of light and reason.  Perhaps these attributes led his worshippers to see him as a patron of seers and diviners who could look past dark clouds of the future to see what was to be in days to come.  But it is his roles as god of shepherds, town builders, and musicians that supports the historian's argument that his functions likely resulted from the contact Greeks had with their neighbors or nations whom they met on battlefields...


Poseidon, like Hades, was a brother of Zeus.  A Corinthian plaque from circa 550 BCE shows the god of the sea with his trident with which he created earthquakes by merely striking the ground.  The Greek historian Herodotus believed he came to be part of the Olympic pantheon after Greek contact with Libyans.  Modern historians believe he was actually a very ancient figure, even older than Zeus, worshipped by the earliest people living in the neighborhood of the Aegean region.  His earth-shaking trident may be the remnants of a time when he, and not Zeus, was believed to cast lightning from heaven.  Poseidon's wife, the Greeks believed, was Amphitrite.  We know too little of her origins in the historical sense.  Myths say this daughter of Oceanus or Nereus rarely showed jealousy of the sort Hera displayed when her husband dallied.  This made Poseidon a truly lucky god...


Love in its holiest and most profane aspects belonged to the province ruled by magical Aphrodite.  Scholars tell us she was, in her origins, a fertility goddess who nourished all creation and whose first worshippers may have been Phoenicians.  Her cult followed sea routes used by Phoenician traders to Cythera and Cyprus before spreading out to Greece and Sicily.  One myth had it that Aphrodite sprang into being from the foam of the sea.  Blown gently across stormy waters by the West Wind, her perfect feet (for all of her was perfect) first touched land along the coastline of Cyprus.  Four goddesses, rulers of the four seasons, waited on the shore to greet her and cloak her radiant nudity in the most beautiful garments ever made.  Then these Horae conducted Aphrodite to the highest realm of heaven where she took her place among the Immortals...
Aphrodite comes ashore for the first time in Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus.


We've previously, in an earlier issue of this blog, told the story of the sculptor Praxiteles who sculpted the courtesan Phryne nude.  He opened himself to charges of blasphemy after naming the resulting work after Aphrodite for the goddess was feminine perfection incarnate.  The challenge to artists since this incident has remained the same-- not just any woman can model as Aphrodite because, to model as Aphrodite, a woman must be  perfect...


Exactly who served as Sandro Botticelli's model for the Birth of Venus remains clouded in mystery.  This masterwork of the Italian Renaissance, painted from 1485 to 1486,  graced the villa of Lorenzo de Medici, a scion of a powerful banking family and de facto ruler of Florence.  Popular belief has it Simonetta Vespucci-- considered to be the most beautiful woman of her time-- inspired Botticelli's portrait of Aphrodite under her Roman name of Venus.  Many critics pooh-pooh the idea, pointing out Vespucci died nine years before the painter first put a brush to this canvas.  But, we must also note, Botticelli did request to be buried at Simonetta's feet in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence.  His wish was granted in 1510...


Our journey together this week ends at the shores of Aeaea, an enchanted island of the ancient world,  where we foreshadow things to come by briefly introducing ourselves to Circe, a minor goddess to some, but a major force to be reckoned with for others.  We see her here in an 1894 work by Alfred Drury whose art is part of a late 19th century "New Sculpture Movement" whose members sought to make sculpted forms more vital and lifelike...


The blind poet Homer says a shipwrecked king named Odysseus found himself sharing a year of his arduous ten year journey home from the Trojan War on this island with the stunningly beautiful sorceress who could transform fierce men into docile beasts.  And, perhaps blasphemously or perhaps with access to tales long lost to us moderns, Homer also describes Circe as the loveliest of all immortals...

 
Alfred Drury, Circe, 1894: Men
transformed into beasts howl,
begging for the attention of the
lovely sorceress.


 

 
THE MARKETPLACE


One very easy and inexpensive way to build a collection of work by some of today's finest painters, sculptors, and photographers:  Greeting cards from Fine Art America. 

Even easier: browse the Louis R Nugent gallery at Fine Art America.  Choose from 250+ unique ideas for home and office decor or holiday and birthday cards for yourself or a special someone who deserves something extraordinary.  Individual cards cost less than $5.  Wall prints from $22.
Louis Nugent: Civic League Park


http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/

 
Follow and Like Louis R Nugent Photography on Facebook @ louisnugent22.

Fine Art America now features painting, drawings, and photographs by sixteen artists who celebrate the majestic and uncompromising landscapes, settlements, people, plants, and animals of West Texas.  Featured this week:

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html


Karen Slagle: Born of the South Wind
Louis Nugent: Electric Triangles
 

Fine Arts America now features  work celebrating the mysterious and lovely Bayou State of Louisiana and its unique lifestyle:


 
CREDITS

Note: All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia, without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: Hera from utexas.edu; Circe from http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/drury/50.html; information about the Greek gods, goddesses, and their cults from the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, London, 1959