Following Ovid’s brief summary of the adventure of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Book 7 of Metamorphoses continues his account of Jason and Medea with an unusual myth about human rejuvenation. Once Jason and his Argonauts had returned to their homes, there was much celebratory feasting, but one person was unable to take part: Jason’s father Aeson, who was too old and nearing death. Jason therefore asks his new wife Medea if she can transfer some of his own youth to extend his father’s years.

Medea initially chides Jason for suggesting such an act forbidden by Hecate as the goddess of witchcraft and sorcery, but then tells him that she will go one better, and try to rejuvenate Aeson without using any of Jason’s future life.

For three nights Medea engages in rituals to seek Hecate’s help, and the goddess sends down her chariot to help her prepare for the task. The sorceress then takes that chariot in her quest for the ingredients required for her magic potion. For nine days and nights, Medea flies around gathering herbs and other arcane substances from all over the world.

She then builds two turf altars and slaughters a sheep before starting to prepare the potion. She calls for Aeson to be brought out to her, and uses a spell to put him to sleep on a bed of magic herbs before dismissing Jason and others. She purges Aeson’s body with water, sulphur, and fire, while her potion is brewing in a cauldron. Where it bubbles over the side, luxuriant plants and flowers sprout up immediately.

Medea finally cuts Aeson’s throat to let all his old blood out and replaces it with her potion. The old man is immediately transformed back to his youth, his thinning white hair replaced by a rich growth of dark locks from someone forty years younger. Bacchus, who has been watching from heaven, asks for the recipe so he can rejuvenate his own nurses.

This monochrome image is the only one available of Pellegrino Tibaldi’s fresco of Medea Rejuvenates Aeson, which he painted in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Medea, naked as became traditional in depictions of witchcraft, is shown purging Aeson’s body with water. Pellegrino relocates the event from outdoor turf altars to a more substantial indoor stone trough, around which are scattered jugs and other remnants from Medea’s sorcery. At Aeson’s feet are statues, the most prominent of which shows Hecate.

About a century later, Domenicus van Wijnen painted his Medea Rejuvenating Aeson (late seventeenth century), invoking alchemy as well as witchcraft. Medea, naked again and reclining in Hecate’s golden chariot, points her wand at the body of Aeson lying on the ground as she casts a spell. A glass sphere above her contains a small devil and shoots a trail of flame and sparks like a rocket. Medea is assisted by four putti and has what appears to be Hecate herself behind her, and a full moon is seen rising above the horizon. Scattered around the scene are objects associated with witchcraft, including a glass cauldron, a jar of brown liquid, a sacrificial knife, old books, and a burning candle.

Bartolomeo Guidobono’s Medea Rejuvenates Aeson from about 1700 is more of a puzzle to read, as Medea, dressed in an unkempt and wild manner, is here accompanied by two men. The near-lifeless and pale body of Aeson rests behind her, but a younger man, possibly the rejuvenated Aeson, is materialising under a table.

There’s a panoply of symbols associated with magic, including a snake and toad, large tomes of spells on top of which is a lizard, an open fire on a small stand, and an assortment of more normal animals including a dog, fox, and deer. The table in the background has further magic equipment, such as an orrery, and a bat is flying to the right of Medea’s head.

Corrado Giaquinto’s splendid Medea Rejuvenating Aeson from 1760 is more theatrical. Set outdoors by the arches of a large stone structure, three gods watch Medea work her spells. At the front of the trio is Diana, wearing a crescent moon as a diadem. To the right is Neptune with his spiked crown and trident, and to the left is (probably) Hecate.

Medea stands in the midst of casting a spell, her wand held over the inert body of Aeson, which rests on a bed of flowers and leaves. Behind that is a more Christian-looking altar, with candles burning at its sides. There is a cauldron heating over an open fire at the bottom right, and the body of a black sheep on a more classical altar to the left.

Sorcery and witchcraft became increasingly popular in the late eighteenth century as themes for painting and other arts, with some innovative works by Fuseli and others. Although those painters would have been well aware of this myth, the rejuvenation of Aeson doesn’t seem to have made its way onto canvas. Popular interest in ‘gothic’ stories of revivification was inspired by the publication in 1818 of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, but by this time narrative painting was in crisis, and Frankenstein’s monster doesn’t seem to have been depicted in painting until the twentieth century. By then Shelley’s story had already appeared in plays and movies.

Just as humans have always wanted to fly, the ability has commonly been ascribed to those elevated to the status of god or goddess. While some systems of belief have been happy to award all their deities the power of flight, it was more restricted in those of the ancient Mediterranean civilisations responsible for most of the myths painted in European art.

Charles-Antoine Coypel’s Fury of Achilles from 1737 captures Achilles, wearing his elaborate armour in the centre, as he’s being aided in the war against Troy by Athena on the left and Hephaestus on the right. Further to the right is Scamander, shown traditionally with his large jar gushing water and a wooden paddle in his right hand. Beneath them are the bodies of Trojans, and the river is starting to run red with their blood. In the more distant chariot is Hera with one of her peacocks.

More generally, though, unlimited free flight was confined to Hermes/Mercury, messenger of the gods, Cupid, and those personifying features of the sky, including the winds, heavenly bodies such as rainbows (Iris, another divine messenger), and events like night.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted The Judgement of Paris late in his long career, in 1908-10. Its three slightly soft-focus nudes are shown against a blurry background of countryside. Paris has accepted Aphrodite’s bribe, and is here awarding her the golden apple. Watching on is Hermes, complete with his winged helmet and sandals signifying his flying ability, and his distinctive caduceus.

The sixth painting in Edward Burne-Jones’ Perseus series, The Death of Medusa II (1881-2), completes the story of Medusa by showing the hero fleeing from the Gorgons. The headless body of Medusa is left on the ground, and her sisters fly around searching for her assailant. Perseus wears the helmet of Hades to maintain his invisibility, and is flying away with his borrowed winged sandals, while inserting Medusa’s head in his kibisis.

Sandro Botticelli’s huge masterpiece Primavera (Spring) demonstrates this differentiation, in its retelling of the story of Zephyrus and Flora. The west wind (far right, and detail below) abducted and raped the nymph Chloris (to the left of him), who was then transformed into the goddess Flora, who is dressed and decked in flowers, representing the Spring. Only Zephyrus as a wind, and Cupid above, are shown in flight.

Charles William Mitchell’s The Flight of Boreas with Orithyia from 1893 gives a full and classical account of this myth. Orithyia is trying to push the head of her abductor away, and unfasten his right hand from her thigh, but Boreas is just about to take her airborne.

Another deity whose role in mythology depends on her ability to fly is Eris, whose spreading of discord among the goddesses was key to the origin of the war against Troy.

In Jacob Jordaens’ Golden Apple of Discord (1633), the facially discordant Eris, seen in midair behind the deities, has just made her gift of the golden apple, now at the centre of the grasping hands above the table. At the left, Minerva (Pallas Athene) reaches forward for it. In front of her, Aphrodite, her son Eros at her knee, points to herself as the goddess most deserving of the apple. On the other side of the table, Hera reaches her hand out for it too.

Flying ability wasn’t evenly distributed in Norse mythology either, but was a skill best developed among valkyries.

Edward Robert Hughes’ first work showing a valkyrie from Norse mythology, Dream Idyll (A Valkyrie) from 1902, depicts a naked and unarmed woman riding a winged horse in the sky over a late Victorian city, perhaps London.

This has perpetuated into more recent myths and legends of fairies and related little creatures.

This Allegorical Scene looks like one of the more extreme faerie works from Victorian Britain, but was painted by Domenicus van Wijnen almost two centuries earlier. At the upper right, hundreds of small putti-like fairies are being ejected from below, flying in an arc over the top of the painting, and coalescing around a goddess lit brightly from behind. Below her is a river, where large numbers of naked bathers are congregated, and they too appear to rise up into the sky in another stream of flying figures.

These have been perpetuated in Christian beliefs in the form of angels, whose wings have more ancient and pre-Christian origins.

Hieronymus Bosch’s panel Ascent of the Blessed is one of the four making up his Visions of the Hereafter (c 1505-15), with particularly original and beautiful winged angels. These wings enable clear distinction to be made between humans and other human-like creatures, and the messengers of God. Being messengers, just as older gods like Eros, Thanatos, and Vanth before them, there’s a feasible rationale for them requiring their wings in order to move swiftly from heaven or the pre-Christian underworld to earth, and in their duties on earth.

There are even a few instances of divine and saintly figures being awarded the gift of flight.

William Blake’s unusual Nativity of 1799-1800 shows Joseph (left) supporting the Virgin Mary, who appears to have fainted. Jesus has somehow sprung from her womb, and hovers, arms outstretched as if ready for crucifixion, in mid-air. On the right, Mary’s cousin Elisabeth greets the infant, with her own son, John the Baptist, on her lap.

The occasional saint has been awarded their licence to fly, as shown here in the figure of Saint Mark in Tintoretto’s early success Miracle of the Slave from 1548. Here the artist’s intention is not just about motion, but about the act of flying, and the figure’s saintliness or divinity.