There are some mythological subjects that artists would do best to avoid, while others almost guarantee success. Medea, sorceress and jilted wife of Jason of Golden Fleece fame, is clearly one of the former. For a start, there’s no single authoritative account of the myths of Jason and Medea. The ancients had no problem in living with conflicting tales, as in their day so little in life could be proved in any rigorous way. But since the Age of Enlightenment we have looked at the world in the expectation of singular truths. In Medea’s case, there isn’t even a rough consensus.

One broad outline might be that Jason travelled to Colchis, where he underwent a series of trials imposed by King Aeëtes, culminating in Jason’s victory over the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece. These were accomplished with the help of Medea, the King’s daughter, in return for Jason’s promise of marriage.

During their voyage home, Medea and Jason married, and she then bore him two sons. Ten years later, Jason divorced Medea in favour of the King of Corinth’s daughter Glauce. Divorce was too much for Medea to bear, so she sent Glauce a poisoned wedding dress to kill her and her father horribly. She then murdered her two children, fled to Athens, and had a child by King Aegeus.

The most consistent insight that we have into Medea is of the depth and complexity of her role and character, particularly in comparison with Jason, a simple pop-up action hero whose endless stream of testosterone made thought largely unnecessary. Yet Medea’s fascinating combination of conflicting roles – princess, sorceress, seductress, wife, mother, and vengeful filicide – have only brought trouble to the succession of painters who have tried to portray her.

From the Renaissance on, paintings of the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts have been frequent and popular. It fell to the obscure Dutch artist Paulus Bor to tackle The Disillusioned Medea (The Enchantress) in about 1640. Believed to have formed a pair with his painting of Cydippe with Acontius’s Apple, Bor comes closest to capturing Medea’s intriguing psychology.

She sits, her face flushed, resting her head on the heel of her right hand. In her left, she holds a wand made from bamboo or rattan, a reference to her sorcery. Her wand is poised ready for use as soon as she has worked out what to do next. Behind her is a small altar to Diana, the goddess of contradiction (the hunt and nature, chastity and childbirth) and the irrational (the moon and nature).

Paired with the story of Acontius and Cydippe, Bor can only be referring to Ovid’s fictional letter from Medea to Jason, letter twelve in his Heroides. Jason has told Medea of their divorce, but she hasn’t yet murdered their children. Medea gives a potted summary of their relationship, her crucial role in Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, and how she had turned her loyalties to him and betrayed her own family. Ovid ends it with portentous lines about Medea following her wrath, and of great forces acting on her soul.

There is another tragedy here too: although almost all of Ovid’s known works have survived to the present, one which hasn’t is his Medea, where his account of her role might have redressed the balance with accounts of Jason’s deeds.

After Bor’s painting, there is a gap of almost two centuries before the next substantial attempt to depict Medea at this troubled time.

JMW Turner’s Vision of Medea (1828) is the first in a series of more modern attempts to tell Medea’s story, and one of Turner’s few uses (perhaps his only use) of multiplex narrative. Turner had stayed in Rome with Sir Charles Eastlake during the autumn and winter of 1828, where he painted his View of Orvieto, Regulus, and this work, together with several other paintings whose identity is less certain.

He exhibited them there to the outrage of critics and the puzzlement of the public. Turner didn’t show this painting at the Royal Academy until 1831, where it was considered to be a wonderful “combination of colour”, but generally incomprehensible.

In the middle of the canvas, Medea is stood in the midst of her incantation to force Jason’s return. In the foreground are the materials she is using to cast her spell: flowers, snakes, and other supplies of a sorceress. Seated by her are the Fates. In the upper right, Medea is shown again in a flash-forward to her fleeing Corinth in a chariot drawn by dragons, the bodies of her children thrown down after their deaths.

Next was Gustave Moreau, in his Jason (1865), which bizarrely excludes Medea from its title. She stands almost naked behind Jason, holding a vial in her right hand, and her body is swathed with the poisonous hellebore plant, a standard tool of witchcraft. It has been suggested that these allude to Jason’s future rejection of Medea and her poisoning of Glauce, but that isn’t borne out by the only clues that Moreau provides, in the almost illegible inscriptions on the two phylacteries wound around the column.

Translated from their Latin, these read: Nay, holding that which I love, and resting in Jason’s arms, I shall travel over the long reaches of the sea; in his safe embrace I will fear nothing. And the heroic son of Aeson [i.e. Jason] gained the Golden Fleece. Proud of this spoil and bearing with him the giver of his prize, another spoil.

These imply we should read the painting in terms of the conflict between Jason and Medea: Medea expresses her subjugate trust in him, while Jason considers her to be just another spoil won alongside the Golden Fleece. When exhibited at the Salon in 1865, the critics were unsure of what they were supposed to be looking at, and Moreau’s narrative was lost amid his surfeit of symbols.

A few years later, Frederick Sandys tried his Medea (1866-68), now possibly his best-known painting. He shows Medea at work preparing a magic potion for one of Jason’s missions. In front of her is a pair of toads copulating, and other ingredients. Behind her, in a gilt frieze, is Jason’s ship the Argo. Despite this fine depiction and Medea’s intense stare, this painting was rejected by the Royal Academy in 1868.

While Sandys was still smarting from that blow, Anselm Feuerbach was painting Medea (1870) as a mother of two, watching as Jason and his Argonauts push their boat back into the surf to go in quest of the Golden Fleece. She is shown as an archetypal mother, a Madonna and infant plus one, not even looking at the departing boat. She is no sorceress, and the merest suggestion that she could ever kill those children in vengeance seems absurd.

Evelyn De Morgan’s Medea (1886) is visually rich but narratively thin. She has been abandoned by Jason, and now stares wistfully as she walks along the polished stone floor of her palace holding a vial of potion in her right hand: might this be the substance with which she impregnated the wedding dress she sent Glauce?

My final example comes from John William Waterhouse in his Jason and Medea (1907). Medea is depicted as a sorceress, perhaps preparing the potion Jason is to later give to the dragon. He appears anxious, ready to go and tackle his challenge. Unlike Sandys, Waterhouse paints but a single toad, behaving itself quietly on the floor.

Each of these paintings has captured some of the many facets of Medea and her complex story. None comes close to the nuances of the verbal accounts, and in their efforts to approach this subject, painters have taken risks that haven’t paid off, at least at the time. Sandys was done an injustice when his painting was rejected by the Royal Academy, and that and Bor’s appear now to be her most successful portraits.

Ovid starts the seventh book of his Metamorphoses with myths concerning Jason, Medea, and the Golden Fleece. Although these take up the first half of this book, he only summarises long and complex stories told more fully elsewhere. They also present a problem in consistency of theme. For the Metamorphoses to provide reasonably comprehensive coverage of all the major contemporary myths, they’re essential, but lack the transformations promised by the title.

The book drops us into the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece just as Jason has learned of the three tasks he must complete to obtain the prize. Medea, the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, considers that her father’s demands are too harsh, and is torn between desire and reason. She recognises that she has fallen in love with Jason, and is already considering wild thoughts of marriage to him.

She thus resolves to provide him with every aid that she can to assist his mission, in the hope that this will ensure their marriage and secure her future glory. Medea therefore goes to an old shrine to Hecate, where she meets Jason and teaches him how to use magic herbs to accomplish the tasks.

Several artists, notably those of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have explored Medea’s role, and her relationship with Jason at this stage of the story. In John William Waterhouse’s Jason and Medea (1907), she’s depicted as a sorceress, preparing the potions Jason was about to use to accomplish his tasks. He appears anxious, ready to go and tackle his challenge.

Frederick Sandys shows Medea (1866-68) at work, preparing a magic potion for one of Jason’s missions. In front of her is a toad, and other ingredients. Behind her, in a gilt frieze, is Jason’s ship the Argo.

The following day, watched by the king, Jason succeeds in his first task of yoking a team of fire-breathing bulls, and using them to plough a field which had never been ploughed before, enabled by a herbal ointment provided by Medea.

As he is ploughing, Jason sows the teeth of a dragon, required for his second task. As with those sown by Cadmus before he founded the city of Thebes, those teeth instantly grow into an army who point their spears at Jason. Medea tells him to throw a large rock into their midst, to draw their attention so they kill one another instead of Jason.

Jason moves on to his final task, to provide him with the Golden Fleece, but first has to get past the dragon guarding it. He sprinkles another of Medea’s herbal preparations on the guardian and recites a magic spell three times to put the dragon to sleep.

The frescoes of the Palazzo Ghisilardi Fava in Bologna give a superb account through eighteen separate images. Although directed by Annibale Carracci, it’s thought that his brother Agostino and cousin Ludovico also made significant contributions during the painting between about 1583-84.

This uses elaborate multiplex narrative to summarise much of Ovid’s account: at the left, two of the fire-breathing bulls are still yoked, in front of King Aeëtes. The army sprung up from the dragon’s teeth appear behind the wall, armed still with spears but no longer fighting. In the foreground, Jason has put the dragon to sleep using Medea’s magic concoction, and is unhitching the Golden Fleece while he can. At the right, two of the Argonauts offer to help Jason (shown a second time) carry the fleece away.

In Jean François de Troy’s The Capture of the Golden Fleece from 1742, Jason reaches up to take the Golden Fleece from a branch of an oak tree. The artist has interpreted this prize as a lamb of rather modest size. However, the hero’s left foot rests on the body of the dragon, whose nostrils emit steam. To the left of Jason is Medea, dressed as an eastern princess, and surrounding them are the Argonauts, whose ship is seen at the far left, preparing to set sail.

Gustave Moreau’s Jason (1865) oddly excludes Medea from its title. She stands almost naked behind Jason, holding a vial in her right hand, and her body is swathed with the poisonous hellebore plant, a standard tool of witchcraft. It has been suggested that these allude to Jason’s later rejection of Medea and her poisoning of Glauce, but that’s not borne out by the only clues provided by Moreau in the almost illegible inscriptions on the two phylacteries wound around the column.

Cooke has deciphered their Latin as reading:
nempe tenens quod amo gremioque in Iasonis haerens
per freta longa ferar; nihil illum amplexa timebo
(Nay, holding that which I love, and resting in Jason’s arms, I shall travel over the long reaches of the sea; in his safe embrace I will fear nothing)
et auro heros Aesonius potitur spolioque superbus
muneris auctorem secum spolia altera portans
(And the heroic son of Aeson [i.e. Jason] gained the Golden Fleece. Proud of this spoil and bearing with him the giver of his prize, another spoil)

These imply we should read the painting in terms of the conflict between Jason and Medea: Medea expresses her subjugate trust in him, while Jason considers her to be just another spoil won alongside the Golden Fleece. When exhibited at the Salon in 1865, the critics were unsure of what they were supposed to be looking at, and Moreau’s narrative was irretrievable amid his surfeit of symbols.

This is the sort of narrative you might have expect Rubens to have painted, and he did prepare some sketches of the motif. It was his pupil and collaborator Erasmus Quellinus the Younger (1607–1678), though, who produced this finished painting of Jason and the Golden Fleece in 1630, probably within Rubens’ workshop.

Once the dragon is slumbering deeply, Jason seizes the Golden Fleece, and sails with Medea and his prize to his home port of Iolcus.

Herbert James Draper shows one account of the tactics employed in The Golden Fleece from 1904: as Jason and his Argonauts are sailing away, Medea throws her brother into the sea, forcing her father to stop to recover him, so allowing the Argo to escape from the pursuit.