Beautiful Helen

British painter Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (1829—1904)

Helen of Troy (1867)

The Pre-Raphaelite painter Frederick Augustus Sandys shows Helen here as a spoiled and defiant princess.

Medea

French painter Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix (1798-1863)

Medea furiosa (1838)

Andromeda

British painter Charles Napier Kennedy (1852-1898)

Andromeda

Pandora's box

British painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

Pandora (1879)

The Shower of Gold

Italian painter Tiziano Vecelli (ca.1488-1576)

Danae and the Shower of Gold (1553)

Circe the Sorceress

German painter Franz von Stuck (1863-1928)

Tilla Durieux as Circe (ca. 1913)

Circe was the daughter of Helios. Sometimes she’s called a goddess, sometimes a nymph or a sorceress. But it’s clear that her power was more witchcraft than divine. She lived in a great mansion in a forest on the island of Aeaea together with a lot of wild animals like lions and wolves.

Odysseus sent some m of his crew ashore on that island to search water and food. Maybe they slaughtered some of Circes beloved animals. Finally the men discovered the palace of Circe and were invited by her to have wine and food. Because the wine was poisoned all the men but one were transformed into swine, which signifies that they behaved like this before.

The only one who had escaped went back to the ship to warn the others who had stayed behind. When Odysseus went to Circe’s palace to rescue his men, he was intercepted by the god Hermes, who gave him a magic herb to protect himself from Circe's potion. So with the help and the advices of Hermes Odysseus not only achieved to rescue his men, furthermore he became the lover of Circe and stayed for one year with Circe on that island. Later she helped him to reach his home.

In the iconography of art Circe is sometimes a kind of nature goddess, who wants to protect her animals from the wild intruders. But most times she has the part of the seductive witch. Where Eva is offering the fateful apple, Circe has her potion.

It’s clear that with the beginning of women emancipation that last part was the more interesting as it can be seen on this painting by Franz Stuck. Here we have a modern aggressive women who affronts her adversary.

The Judgement of Paris

Dutch painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

The Judgement of Paris (1636)

Huntress Diana

French painter Guillaume Seignac (1870 - 1924). Seignac was a kind of "Neo Rococo" painter specialized on erotic women.

Diane (1899)

Helen of Troy

British academic painter Sir Edward John Poynter (1836–1919)

Helen (1881)

Helen of Troy, was the daughter of Zeus and Leda. As the daughter of Leda and her divine father she became the most beautiful (human) woman of the world. Hardly surprising that many kings and princes wanted to marry her, and she chose Menelaus the mighty king of Sparta.
The problems began when the goddess Aphrodite promised Paris a prince from Troy the love of the most beautiful of all women and helped him to take Helen away with him. As anybody knows was this was the cause of the Trojan war. Apart from that is not clear, if Helen followed Paris willingly or if she was taken by force, if she really loved Paris or if she was only a vain and selfish woman.
When the Greeks finally conquered and destroyed the city Menelaus wanted to kill his unfaithful wife, but seeing her beauty (she dropped her robe) he forgave her and took her as his queen back to Sparta.

It seems that artists were not very interested in Helen as a person. She appears more as the prize, the big trophy, that for the best champions of the world battled for years. She was as Christopher Marlowe said: "the face that launched a thousand ships."

On this painting by Edward Poynter she looks a little disturbed while Troy is burning down.

Clytemnestra

French painter Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774-1833)

Clytemnestra hesitates before killing the sleeping Agamemnon (1817)

Andromeda

French painter Paul Gustave Doré (1832–1883)

Andromeda chained to the rock

Medea by Morgan

British painter Evelyn de Morgan (1850-1919)


Medea (1889)

Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra was the wife of Agamemnon, the king of of Mycenae and leader of the Greek forces in the Trojan War. When the winds prevented the Greek ships from sailing. Agamemnon was told that the winds would return if he sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia. Knowing that Clytemnestra never would permit this, he asked her to send Iphigeneia because he wanted to marry her to Achilles. When Iphigeneia arrived, she was sacrificed, which caused a lot of griev to her mother.

During the siege of Troja the horny Agamemnon quarrelled with Achilles for the posession of the female booty they made in the war, and nearly ruined the Greek cause by his greed. After the war he returned with Cassandra princess of Troy as his concubine.

In the meantime Clytemnestra had began a love affair with Aegisthus, her husband's cousin. When Agamemnon arrived in Mycenae she waited until he was taking a bath and then she slaughtered him. Liberating herself and Greece of an egoistic horny old king.

This interesting interpretation is by the British painter John Collier (1850–1934), and its called "After the murder" (1882). It depicts Clytemnestra bloody and with an hevy axe like a butcher, but she is looking proud and content.

Medea

German painter Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880)



Medea with the dagger (1871)