Once Achelous had completed telling the story of how his lost horn had been transformed into the Horn of Plenty, the floods had abated, so his guests left the banquet, leaving Ovid to explain the events leading to the death of the great hero Hercules. This reverses the chronological order, as the next story after that in Metamorphoses tells of his birth.

Having won her hand by defeating Achelous, Hercules married the beautiful Deianira, and was returning with her to his native city. The couple reached the River Euenus, which was still in spate from the winter’s rains. Hercules feared for his bride trying to cross the river, but the centaur Nessus came up and offered to carry her across.

Hercules had thrown his club and bow to the other bank and had swum across the river when he heard Deianira’s voice calling. He suspected Nessus was trying to abduct her, so shouted warning to him before loosing an arrow at the centaur’s back.

Ovid’s description of these events poses a problem for those trying to depict them, in choosing the right point of view and composition to remain faithful to that account.

Guido Reni’s masterly painting from around 1620, one of the finest of its period in the Louvre, almost fills the canvas with Nessus, who looks worryingly heroic, and Deianeira, who seems to be flying. The small figure of Hercules in the distance is well-lit, but loses the details of bow and arrow. In any case, that arrow could hardly strike Nessus in the chest.

Paolo Veronese’s painting from about 1586 also elects for this early moment, as Hercules is readying his bow and arrow, with Nessus just reaching the opposite bank. He shows the scene from Hercules’ position, but discovers the problems with that point of view: Nessus and Deianeira are now small, and Nessus is looking away with his chest concealed, and even Hercules’ face is turned from the viewer. The result makes its hero look more like a furtive stalker.

This marvellous painting was probably made by Rubens’ workshop around the time of the Master’s death in 1640. It views the events from the bank on which Hercules is poised to shoot his arrow into Nessus. This has the centaur running across the width of the canvas, his face and body well exposed for Hercules’ arrow to enter his chest. To make clear Nessus’ intentions, a winged Cupid has been added, and Deianeira’s facial expression is clear in intent. An additional couple, in the right foreground, might be intended to be a ferryman and his friend, who appear superfluous apart from their role in achieving compositional balance.

Antonio del Pollaiolo’s painting from about 1475–80 tries a side-on view, requiring Nessus to be shot while still in the river, in a slight adjustment to the original story. Deianeira appears precariously balanced, and must be grateful that Nessus’ muscular arms save her from being dropped into the river below. The artist also leaves it to the viewer to know that Hercules’ poisoned arrow strikes Nessus rather than Deianeira.

Three centuries later, Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée clearly understood the compositional problem, but didn’t arrive at such a good solution. Nessus, bearing a distressed Deianeira in his arms, has just reached the opposite bank, in the foreground. Hercules is on the left in the distance, and we can at least see his face, bow and arrow. There appears to be no way that Hercules’ arrow could impale Nessus’ chest, without first passing through some of the abundant Deianeira, nor his back. Lagrenée also adds a ferryman, who seems to have been knocked over in Nessus’ haste to make off with his captive.

Gustave Moreau’s final drawing of about 1860, squared up and ready to transfer to canvas for painting, alters the story to make its composition feasible. He puts Nessus in the foreground, with the attendant risk of making him appear the hero, somehow supporting the upstretched body of Deianeira. In the right distance, Hercules has already loosed the fatal arrow, which is prominently embedded not in the front of Nessus’ chest, but in his back. The centaur’s legs have collapsed under him, and his head and neck are stretched up in the agony of death.

Gustave Moreau and Jules Élie Delaunay seem to have worked on a compositional solution together, resulting in Delaunay’s brilliant painting of 1870, which is sadly not available for use here.

That single shot ran Nessus through. He tore the arrow out, and his blood spurted freely, mixed with poison from the Lernaean hydra. Determined to avenge his own death, the centaur gave Deianira his tunic soaked with that poison, telling her to keep it to “strengthen waning love.”

In about 1706, Sebastiano Ricci embroidered this story further, showing Hercules, his left hand grasping Nessus’ mouth, about to club the centaur to death, while a slightly bedraggled Deianeira watches in the background. There’s no arrow in Nessus’ chest, and Hercules’ quiver is puzzlingly trapped under Nessus’ right foreleg. Three other figures of uncertain roles are at the right, and a winged putto hovers overhead, covering its eyes with its right hand.

In Arnold Böcklin’s puzzling painting from 1898, Nessus is far from part-human, and Deianeira isn’t the beauty she was claimed to be. As those two wrestle grimly, Hercules has stolen up behind them, and is busy pushing a spear into Nessus’ bulging belly. Blood pours from the wound, but Deianeira is in no position to collect it.

Years passed after Nessus’ death, and Hercules was away in Oechalia, intending to pay his respects to Jupiter at Cenaeum. Word reached Deianira that her husband had fallen in love there with Iole. Initially, she was upset, but then tried to devise a strategy to address his rumoured unfaithfulness. It was then that she recalled the blood of Nessus, and his dying words to her. She therefore impregnated a shirt with that blood, and gave that to Lichas, Hercules’ servant, to take to her husband.

This is shown in this beautiful miniature accompanying Octavien de Saint-Gelais’ translation of Ovid’s Heroides from about 1510.

Hercules donned the shirt as he was about to pray to Jupiter. He felt warmth spreading throughout his limbs, quickly growing into intense pain. Trying to tear the shirt off, he obtained no relief, and only ripped off his burnt skin from the burning flesh underneath. Hercules roamed through Oeta like a wounded beast, still trying to tear the shirt off his body. He came across Lichas, and accused him of being his murderer. His servant tried to protest his innocence, but Hercules picked him up, swung him around, and flung him out to sea, where he was transformed into a rock pinnacle.

Hercules then cut down trees and built himself a funeral pyre. Ordering this to be lit, he climbed on top, and lay back on his lionskin.

This is illustrated in another miniature, The Death of Hercules (c 1470), this time for Raoul Le Fèvre’s Histoires de Troyes.

Francisco de Zurbarán’s powerful Death of Hercules (1634) uses chiaroscuro as stark as any of Caravaggio’s to show a Christian martyrdom, with its victim staring up to heaven, commending his soul to God.

Jupiter came to the aid of the dying hero, calling on the gods to consent to Hercules being transformed into a god; they agreed, and his immortal form was carried away on a chariot drawn by four horses, into the stars above.

Tiepolo’s wonderful Apotheosis of Hercules (c 1765) portrays this as a saintly ascension, which seems inappropriate.

No matter what your background, religion or culture, there’s one universal cause for feasting and celebration, a wedding. One of the great challenges for the figurative painter, weddings are the central feature in three classical myths and one religious story examined in this article; tomorrow’s sequel looks at the depiction of less famous, personal weddings.

Of the three great mythical weddings, the first in chronological order was that of Hippodame and Pirithous, which brought an end to the dominance of centaurs on earth, the Centauromachy. This was celebrated in prominent places: the subsequent battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs was shown in sculpture on the temple of Zeus at Olympia, and on the Parthenon at Athens. It was Ovid, though, who chose to tell this story in the context of the Trojan War.

When Pirithous married Hippodame, the couple invited centaurs to the feast. Unfortunately, passions of the centaur Eurytus became inflamed by drink and lust for the bride, and he carried off Hippodame by her hair. The other centaurs followed suit by each seizing a woman of their choice, turning the wedding feast into utter chaos, like a city being sacked. Theseus castigated Eurytus and rescued the bride, so the centaur attacked him. Theseus responded by throwing a huge wine krater at Eurytus, killing him. The centaurs then started throwing goblets and crockery, and the battle escalated from there.

Piero di Cosimo’s The Fight between Lapiths and Centaurs (1500-15) is my favourite among the earlier paintings of the ultimate wedding feast gone wrong. In the centre foreground, Hylonome embraces and kisses the dying Cyllarus, a huge arrow-like spear resting underneath them. Immediately behind them, on the large carpets laid out for the wedding feast, centaurs are still abducting women. All around are scenes of pitched and bloody battles, with eyes being gouged out, and Lapiths and Centaurs wielding clubs and other weapons at one another. This is definitely a wedding to remember, if you survived it.

Towards the end of his life, Peter Paul Rubens painted The Rape of Hippodame (1636-38). At the right, Eurytus is trying to carry off Hippodame, the bride, with Theseus just about to rescue her from the centaur’s back. At the left, Lapiths are attacking with their weapons, and behind them another centaur is trying to abduct a woman.

The next wedding to be grateful you missed was that between the great hero Perseus and the princess whom he rescued from Cetus the sea monster. Andromeda’s parents were so delighted at their daughter’s rescue that she, who had already been promised in marriage to Phineus, was quickly married instead to Perseus. At the wedding feast, Phineus and his friends were understandably rather miffed, and a violent quarrel broke out between them and Perseus. As happens at the most memorable of weddings, this turned seriously nasty when weapons came out and bodies started to fall. The solution for Perseus was to brandish the head of Medusa and turn Phineus and his friends into cold statuary.

Annibale Carracci and Domenichino combined their talents in painting this fresco of Perseus and Phineas (1604-06) in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. As Perseus stands in the centre brandishing the Gorgon’s face towards his attackers, Andromeda and her parents shelter behind, shielding their eyes for safety.

Surprisingly few paintings of this wedding make reference to the goddess Minerva’s protection of Perseus, which is clearly expressed in Jean-Marc Nattier’s undated painting of Perseus, Under the Protection of Minerva, Turns Phineus to Stone by Brandishing the Head of Medusa. The goddess, Perseus’ half-sister, is sat on a cloud to the right of and behind the hero. She wears her distinctive helmet, grips her spear, and her left hand holds the Aegis, providing narrative closure.

Perseus points his weapons away from himself and Minerva, and is looking up towards the goddess. In the foreground, one of Phineus’ party seems to be sorting through the silverware, perhaps intending to make off with it. The happy couple picked themselves up from the bodies, statues and debris, and moved on. Perseus gave thanks to Minerva for her support and the loan of her shield, by the votive offering of Medusa’s head, which Minerva had set into her shield, turning it into the Aegis.

The wedding of Thetis, sea nymph and spinster of this parish, and Peleus, king of Phthia and bachelor of that parish, was celebrated with a great feast on Mount Pelion attended by most of the gods. The happy couple were given many gifts by the gods, but one, Eris the goddess of discord, had not been invited. As an act of spite at her exclusion, she threw a golden apple ‘of discord’ into the middle of the goddesses, to be given as a reward to ‘the fairest’.

This is Jacob Jordaens’ The Golden Apple of Discord from 1633, based on a brilliant oil sketch by Rubens. The facially discordant Eris, seen in midair behind the deities, has just made her gift of the golden apple, which is at the centre of the grasping hands, above the table. At the left, Minerva (Pallas Athene) reaches forward for it. In front of her, Venus, her son Cupid at her knee, points to herself as the goddess most deserving of the apple. On the other side of the table, Juno reaches her hand out for it too. This sets up the Judgement of Paris, and the rest is legendary.

For once it’s the most modern version, painted by Edward Burne-Jones as The Feast of Peleus in 1872-81, that sticks most closely to the story. In a composition based on classical representations of the Last Supper, he brings Eris in at the far right, her golden apple still concealed. Every head has turned towards her, apart from that of the centaur behind her right wing. Even the three Fates, in the left foreground, have paused momentarily in their work.

This wedding banquet set up the beauty contest between Juno, Venus and Minerva in the Judgement of Paris. Venus won following her bribe promising Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, who happened at the time to be married to King Menelaus of Sparta. After Paris abducted Helen to Troy, the Greeks united to wage war against Troy, eventually capturing and destroying the city.

In 1562, Paolo Veronese was commissioned to paint a large work for the refectory of the Benedictine Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Its central narrative is an episode of the ministry of Christ as recorded in the gospels: Christ and his disciples were invited to a wedding feast in Cana, Galilee. Towards its end, the wine started to run out, and he was asked what they should do. He directed servants to fill jugs with water, which he then miraculously turned into wine.

This huge canvas shows Christ, distinguished by his halo, at the centre of his disciples, with the Virgin Mary (also with halo) at his right, and sundry disciples arrayed along that side of the tables. The wedding group is at the far left of the party.

At the far right of the canvas, wine is shown being poured from a large container, a clear cue to the gospel narrative.

There’s also a great deal of other activity in every part of the painting. On the balcony behind Christ there are scenes of the butchery of meat, which is generally claimed to be lamb and symbolic of Christ’s future death as a sacrifice for mankind, as the ‘Lamb of God’, although there are no visual clues to support that interpretation. In the musicians below, and other guests, it is claimed that there are portraits of artists, including Veronese himself, and Titian. Other important figures who are supposed to be shown include Eleanor of Austria, Francis I of France, Mary I of England, Suleiman the Magnificent, and Emperor Charles V.

Finally, I turn to one of many weddings in more modern European literature.

The eighth story told on the fifth day of Boccaccio’s Decameron concerns the misfortunes of one Nastagio Degli Onesti, involving one ghost killing and dismembering the ghost of a woman, a strange and grisly tale told in a series of four panels by Botticelli. The fourth and last shows the hero Nastagio’s wedding, the bride and her women sitting to the left, and the men to the right, in formal symmetry. The groom is sat on the other side of the same table as the bride.