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Changing Paintings: Summary and contents parts 19-36

By: hoakley
26 June 2025 at 19:30

This is the second of four articles providing brief summaries and contents for this series of paintings telling myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and covers parts 19-36, from Perseus’ rescue of Andromeda to Theseus killing the Minotaur.

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Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), The Perseus Series: The Doom Fulfilled (1888), oil on canvas, 155 × 140.5 cm, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart. Wikimedia Commons.

Perseus in mid-flight over North Africa with the head of Medusa. Atlas refuses his request for lodging and transformed into a mountain. Perseus finds Andromeda chained to a rock, frees her and kills the sea-monster. Blood from Medusa’s head transformed into coral.

19 Perseus rescues Andromeda

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Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), The Perseus Series: The Death of Medusa I (1882), bodycolour, 124.5 × 116.9 cm, Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, England. Wikimedia Commons.

Perseus marries Andromeda. In his wedding speech, Perseus gives his account of killing Medusa. Medusa had been raped by Neptune and punished by Minerva in the transformation of her hair into snakes.

20 Perseus kills Medusa

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Jean-Marc Nattier (1685–1766), Perseus, Under the Protection of Minerva, Turns Phineus to Stone by Brandishing the Head of Medusa (date not known), oil on canvas, 113.5 × 146 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours, Tours, France. Wikimedia Commons.

The wedding feast disrupted by Phineus, who claims Andromeda was stolen from him. They fight, Perseus turning them into statues using Medusa’s face. The couple return to Argos, and Minerva to Helicon, where the Muses tell her of a spring created by the hoof-print of Pegasus. The Pierides challenge the Muses to a story contest.

21 The fate of Phineus, and the Muses on Helicon

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Walter Crane (1845–1915), The Fate of Persephone (1878), oil and tempera on canvas, 122.5 × 267 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

The story of Proserpine sung by Calliope the Muse. Venus uses Cupid to make Pluto fall for the young Proserpine. He abducts her to Hades. The nymph Cyan fails to stop them and melts away into a pool of tears. Ceres, Proserpine’s mother, told by Arethusa of her abduction, and appeals to Jupiter. As the girl had nibbled a pomegranate while in Hades, she can’t be freed, so spends winter with Pluto in Hades, and summer with Ceres.

22 Proserpine’s fate

Calliope tells of Arethusa’s attempted rape by Alpheus, and her transformation into a stream joined by Alpheus’ river to Diana’s island of Ortygia. Ceres visits Triptolemus to give him seed for unproductive land. Lyncus tries to kill him when he’s asleep, and transformed into a lynx.

23 Arethusa, Lyncus and the magpies

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Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti) (1519-1594) (attr. workshop), Athena and Arachne (1543-44), oil on canvas, 145 x 272 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence, Italy. Olga’s Gallery, http://www.abcgallery.com.

Arachne boasts that she’s a better weaver than Minerva, so they compete. Arachne shows images critical of the gods, so Minerva tears up her work and strikes her. Arachne tries to hang herself, and Minerva transforms her into a spider.

24 Arachne’s fate

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Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe (1772), oil on canvas, 120.7 cm x 153.7 cm, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX. Wikimedia Commons.

Niobe boasts she’s more worthy than Latona, who tells her children Apollo and Diana to punish the mortal. The pair slaughter Niobe’s seven sons and seven daughters. Niobe transformed into marble on a mountain peak, forming the River Achelous.

25 The slaughter of Niobe’s children

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Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), Latona and the Lycian Peasants (1595-1610), oil on panel, 37 × 56 cm, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.

Pregnant with Apollo and Diana, Latona goes to Lycia to give birth. Afterwards she seeks water, but locals prevent her, so are turned into frogs as punishment.

26 Latona and the Lycian peasants

The satyr Marsyas challenges Apollo to a music contest judged by the Muses. The god wins, and exacts the penalty of flaying the satyr alive. Tears of satyrs and fauns create a new river.

27 The music contest

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Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itys (1636-38), oil on panel, 195 × 267 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Wikimedia Commons.

King Tereus of Thrace rapes his sister-in-law Philomela, cuts out her tongue and abandons her in a forest cabin. She tells her story in her weaving, is rescued, and with Tereus’ wife they kill and cook the king’s son, and trick Tereus into eating his own son. The sisters transformed into swallows, and Tereus into a hoopoe.

28 Philomela’s revenge

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Charles William Mitchell (1854–1903), The Flight of Boreas with Oreithyia (1893), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

The north wind Boreas abducts his betrothed Orithyia.

29 Boreas and Orithyia

Draper, Herbert James, 1864-1920; The Golden Fleece
Herbert James Draper (1863–1920), The Golden Fleece (1904), oil on canvas, 155 x 272.5 cm, Bradford Museums, Bradford, England. Wikimedia Commons.

Medea falls in love with Jason and helps him in the three tasks he must perform to win the Golden Fleece. They sail home with their prize.

30 Jason, Medea and the Golden Fleece

Jason asks Medea to rejuvenate his ageing father Aeson, which she does successfully.

31 Rejuvenating Aeson

Vision of Medea 1828 by Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), Vision of Medea (1828), oil on canvas, 173.7 x 248.9 cm, The Tate Gallery (Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856), London. Image © and courtesy of The Tate Gallery, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-vision-of-medea-n00513

Medea tricks the daughters of Pelias into rejuvenating their father, but instead they boil him alive. Medea flees, is abandoned by Jason, murders her two sons, and marries King Aegeus of Athens.

32 Medea’s murder by proxy

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Hippolyte Flandrin (1809–1864), Theseus Recognized by his Father (1832), oil on canvas, 114.9 × 146.1 cm, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

King Aegeus makes Aethra pregnant and returns to Athens. His son Theseus grows up and travels to Athens to prove his paternity. Medea tries to trick the king into poisoning his son. When that fails, she flees, leaving Theseus to become a hero.

33 The origins of Theseus

War between King Aegeus of Athens and King Minos of Crete. Juno’s reprisal against the nymph Aegina in a plague, killing the people of Aegina, then repopulated from ants transformed into warriors, the Myrmidons, who later fight in the Trojan War.

34 Minos and the Myrmidons

Cephalus, envoy from Athens, tells how he accidentally killed his wife Procris with his javelin. She had suspected him of infidelity with an imaginary zephyr, so was following him when he was hunting. He mistook her for a wild beast that had been eating the livestock of Thebes.

35 The tragedy of Cephalus and Procris

King Minos attacks the city of King Nisus, whose daughter Scylla betrays Nisus leading to his defeat. She fails to win the love of Minos. Nisus changed into an osprey, Scylla into a seabird. Minos returns to Crete where he can’t escape the shame of his wife’s bestiality with a bull and birth of the Minotaur. Minos gets Daedalus to build a maze to contain the Minotaur, then feeds it every nine years with young Athenians. Minos’ daughter Ariadne helps Theseus kill the Minotaur. Theseus abducts her to Naxos, where he abandons her. She meets Bacchus and marries.

36 Theseus and the Minotaur

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