Many of the heroes of the classical world were deeply flawed. Theseus, founder of Athens, treated women appallingly, and Jason of the Argonauts was no better. This new series looks at paintings of the legendary lives of those who could have been villains or hooligans rather than the heroes they were held to be.

Perseus, the greatest slayer of monsters among them, seems to have been faithful to Andromeda, the princess he rescued from the jaws of Cetus, the sea monster. He even killed Polydectes, who was chasing his mother. Like several other classical heroes, Perseus was the result of divine union with a mortal, in this case Zeus/Jupiter with Danaë. She had been imprisoned in a bronze chamber to prevent her from becoming pregnant, as her father Acrisius, King of Argos, had been warned by an oracle that he would be killed by his daughter’s son.

With a skylight as the chamber’s only source of light and air, Zeus descended on her in the form of golden rain. Danae (c 1900) is Carolus-Duran’s beautifully simple painting of this story, showing the shower of gold falling from its upper edge.

Gustav Klimt’s Danaë is curled into a foetal ball, and is usually interpreted as showing arousal. She became pregnant, later giving birth to Perseus. Her father then tried to kill them both by putting them in a wooden chest and casting it into the sea, but they were washed up alive on the island of Seriphos, where Dictys, a fisherman and brother of King Polydectes, raised the boy.

As a young man, Perseus suspected the intentions of Polydectes towards his mother Danaë, and tried to protect her from him. In a bid to get Perseus out of his way, Polydectes called a large banquet for which each guest was expected to bring a gift of a horse. As Perseus had no horse to give, he asked the king to name a substitute, which was the head of the Gorgon Medusa, and the cue for Perseus’ major adventure.

Although the myths of Perseus have long been popular subjects for painters, none has devoted as much attention to them as Edward Burne-Jones, whose uncompleted Perseus series is one of the greatest visual accounts of any classical myth.

This series starts with The Call of Perseus (1877), showing a double image of Perseus with Athena outside the city. At the left, Athena approaches the pensive Perseus, who is pondering how he can obtain the head of Medusa, staring into a stream. At the right, Athena has transformed herself into her regular and recognisable form, and is giving Perseus her advice, and providing him with the mirror with which he can view Medusa in safety. Although other artists have depicted this mirror as an impressive circular shield, throughout this series Burne-Jones shows it as a far smaller circular hand mirror.

The first call in Perseus’ mission were the sisters of the Gorgons, the Graiae (there are various spellings), who would in turn lead him to the Hesperides, who would provide him with a kibisis, a small bag into which he would put Medusa’s head.

Burne-Jones next shows Perseus with the three Graiae. He has just intercepted and seized their single, shared eye, which he is holding in his right hand, and only returns once they have led him to the Hesperides. The words in the inscription provide a potted summary, in translation:
Pallas Athena spurred Perseus to action with her urging, and equipped him with arms. The Graiae revealed to him the remote home of the nymphs. From here he went with wings on his feet and with his head shrouded in darkness, and with his sword he struck the one mortal Gorgon, the others being immortal. Her two sisters arose and pursued him. Next he turned Atlas to stone. The sea serpent was slain and Andromeda rescued, and the comrades of Phineas became lumps of rock. Then Andromeda looked in a mirror with wonder at the dreadful Medusa.
(Modified from Anderson & Cassin.)

Perseus needed four more items for his mission: Zeus gave him an adamantine sword and the helm of darkness from Hades, enabling him to hide invisibly. Hermes lent out his winged sandals so that Perseus could fly like a god, and Athena provided him with a polished shield, so he could avoid looking directly at Medusa’s face, which would have turned him to stone.

Perseus then flew to the cave in which the Gorgons were asleep, and beheaded Medusa. From her severed neck sprung the winged horse Pegasus, and Chrysaor, a sword of gold.

Eugène Romain Thirion’s Perseus Victorious Over Medusa from 1867 respects convention, with the hero triumphantly holding Medusa’s head aloft, facing away from him. He shows Pegasus behind, but not Chrysaor, which is generally omitted from these paintings, and indeed from some verbal accounts.

The two surviving Gorgons tried to pursue Perseus, but he donned the helm of Hades and became invisible to them. He flew over North Africa, and sought rest and accommodation from Atlas there. However, Atlas refused him hospitality, for which Perseus showed him the face of Medusa, turning him to stone.

The seventh painting in Burne-Jones’ Perseus Series, his Atlas Turned to Stone (1878), shows the aftermath of Atlas’ failure to offer hospitality: he has been turned to stone by the residual power of Medusa’s face, and now stands bearing the cosmos on his shoulders as Perseus flies off to Ethiopia to rescue Andromeda.

Perseus stopped in Ethiopia, which was ruled by King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia. She had boasted of the beauty of her daughter Andromeda, and so incurred the wrath of Poseidon, bringing floods and a voracious sea monster named Cetus. The local oracle told the king and queen that the only way to save their people from Cetus was to sacrifice their daughter to the monster. Accordingly, and with great grief, they were forced to comply. Andromeda was therefore fastened to a rock at the edge of the sea to await Cetus.

Frederic, Lord Leighton’s Perseus and Andromeda (1891) shows the ‘invisible’ Perseus astride Pegasus shooting arrows into Cetus, while the monster surrounds Andromeda. Cetus is here a conventional fire-breathing dragon, complete with stereotypical wings and a long tail. Andromeda is not naked, as her modesty is preserved by draping a white robe around her waist.

This Roman wall painting from the ruins of Pompeii, dated to about 50-75 CE, adopts the approach typical of many later artists, showing a close-up of the couple. Andromeda is still chained to the rock by her left wrist, and is partially clad, nakedness being reserved for the hero and half-god Perseus. He has Medusa’s head tucked behind him, its face shown for ease of recognition, wears his winged sandals, and carries a straight sword in his left hand. There is still no sign of any sea monster.

Landscape painting of the early twentieth century included individualists whose approach to the depiction of reflections on water departed from those of the past. This article looks at two very different artists from central Europe: Ferdinand Hodler with his Parallelism, and Gustav Klimt who mainly painted landscapes during his summer holidays.

Hodler often painted the same landscapes repeatedly, although not in the same way as Claude Monet’s formal series. His view At the Foot of Petit Salève from about 1893 breaks up the reflections of the golden trees with bands of black and purple that don’t appear to be correlated with those of the original image above.

In contrast, this view of Lake Thun with Symmetrical Reflection Before Sunrise from 1904 appears to be meticulously faithful to optical principles.

However, in 1908 when he was in pursuit of Parallelist ideals, he painted this Rhythmic Landscape on Lake Geneva. This was a second version of a view he had previously painted three years earlier, when he wrote “This is perhaps the landscape in which I applied my compositional principles most felicitously.” Most of his symmetry and rhythm is obvious; what may not be so apparent are the idiosyncratic reflections seen on the lake’s surface. The gaps in the train of cumulus clouds here become optically impossible dark blue pillars, responsible for much of the rhythm in the lower half of the painting.

In the last few months of his life, Hodler simplified reflections into bands of colour. Lake Geneva with Mont Blanc in the Morning Light (1918) has a much simpler structure, with the water, a band of reflections, the mass of the far shore and mountains merged, and the dawn sky. The dominant colour is the yellow to pale red of the sky and its reflection.

Lake Geneva with Mont Blanc in the (Red) Dawn Light (1918) is simplified further to the water coloured by the sky, a zone of blue reflections of the far bank, the merged distant shore and mountains, and the sky.

Gustav Klimt developed his approach to reflections during the summers he spent with his partner’s family on Lake Attersee, when he painted extensively using a telescope.

Schloß Kammer at Attersee (1910) is Klimt’s view across the lake of this manor house, with contrasting textures in foliage, walls and roofs. The reflections have lost the granular texture of the original image, giving them a glassy appearance, and appear optically faithful.

Castle with a Moat shows Unterach Manor on the Attersee Lake, and was probably painted in 1908 or 1909. It incorporates his almost Divisionist dotted foliage with contrasting smooth-textured walls of buildings, again softened in the reflected image. However, there’s some mismatch apparent in the hut on the water’s edge. Given the water between the motif and the artist, this must have been painted through a telescope, or possibly from a boat on the lake.

The same flattening is seen in his view of Malcesine on Lake Garda from 1913. The terraced properties running to the left of the centre of the painting are shown in a parallel projection, without any nearby vanishing point, which is again characteristic of a view through a telescope or similar optical instrument. However, the reflections owe more to Hodler’s Parallelism than they do to optics.

Mosaics, composed of small fragments of coloured stone, glass or ceramic in a matrix of plaster or mortar, have ancient origins in the civilisations of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. Although widely viewed as being decorative, some of the best examples transcend that to become fine art.

This breathtaking mosaic in the vault of the chapel of San Zeno, in Santa Prassede, Rome, created in 817-824 CE, goes well beyond mere ceiling decoration.

At the end of 1903, Gustav Klimt visited one of the major collocations of mosaics in Ravenna, Italy, where he saw and was deeply impressed by the spectacular Byzantine mosaics of Justinian I and the Empress Theodora in the Basilica of San Vitale. They inspired a portrait he completed four years later.

His first Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907) is the most extreme and startling work from Klimt’s Golden Phase. Apart from her bust and arms, which are painted in oils, the rest of his canvas is, like the mosaic of the Empress Theodora, encrusted with gold and silver. Its decorative patterns include symbols of eyes, flowers, whorls, ellipses divided into halves, and rich textures worked into the gold leaf.

A few accomplished painters also created mosaics, usually later in their career.

Between about 1890-1910, the French Naturalist painter Luc-Olivier Merson created this extraordinary mosaic of Christ in Majesty in the apse of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Sacré-Cœur) of Paris in Montmartre. This is thought to be one of the largest mosaics in the world.

At about the same time, the American painter Elihu Vedder was creating a mosaic in the central arched panel leading to the Visitor’s Gallery of the Library of Congress, in Washington, DC.

His Minerva of Peace (1897) shows this Roman goddess of wisdom, the guardian of civilisation, and sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. Vedder stresses that this was attained by warfare, and shows a miniature statue of Nike, the Greek winged goddess of victory, known to the Romans as Victoria. Nike holds the palm frond of peace and the laurel of victory.

Minerva’s helmet and shield rest on the ground, but she remains ever-vigilant in holding a spear in her right hand. Her left hand holds a scroll listing the fields of learning, from Agriculture to Zoology and Finance. These reveal her association with wisdom and knowledge. To the left of Minerva’s right knee is an owl, symbolising wisdom.

The inscription below, Nil invita Minerva, quae monumentum aere perennius exegit, means Not unwilling, Minerva raises a monument more lasting than bronze, and is quoted from Horace’s Ars Poetica.

Other artists painted in the style of mosaics.

In The Hutsul Madonna from 1909, Kazimierz Sichulski used a combination of tempera and pastel to create passages that appear to be mosaics, while others look more like stained glass, in a luminous Art Nouveau style.

Above is the left panel, and below is its centre panel.

Some of the Divisionists, notably Paul Signac, applied their paint in small rectangular patches termed tesserae, the same word for the coloured pieces used to compose mosaics.

Signac adopted these by 1905, and continued to use them for the rest of his career. They’re shown above in his painting of The Lighthouse at Groix from 1925, and in the detail below. These are oriented to help form each object.

Although these create a distinctive effect, they don’t follow Georges Seurat’s original intention of optical mixing of colours in fine dots, although they’re much quicker to apply, and refer back to the great Byzantine mosaics.