Classical Mythology, 7th Edition - obinfonet: dia logou

700
THE SURVIVAL OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
the classical myths, and those who wish to understand best what "classicism"
means in the centuries following the Renaissance should study the long series
of drawings and paintings done by Poussin on mythological themes (see
Color Plates 11 and 13).
OTHER PAINTERS
From the time of Poussin to our own day, artists have returned again and again
to the classical myths, and the ancient gods and heroes have survived in art as
in literature. We cannot here satisfactorily survey even a corner of this vast field
of study, but we can refer to some important stages in the use of classical myths
by artists.
Painters in France and Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries used
classical myths for narrative paintings on a heroic scale, for these were considered
to belong to history painting, the most highly esteemed genre. The leading
painter at the court of Louis XV, François Boucher (1703-1770), produced a long
series of classical scenes, often pastoral and usually erotic (see Color Plate 15).
In the last third of the eighteenth century, this somewhat sentimental approach
to classical mythology gave way to a sterner view of the classical past, which
placed a high value on the moral lessons to be drawn from history. In the nineteenth
century, therefore, when painters in England and France returned to subjects
taken from classical mythology, their approach tended to be moralistic, paralleling
(as far as art can parallel literature) the approach typified by Hawthorne
and Kingsley, discussed earlier.
TWO ROMANTIC IDEALISTS
Gustav Moreau (1826-1989) and Edward Burne-Iones (1833-1898) were profoundly
inspired by classical mythology, and their art goes far beyond the morality and symbolism
of many of their contemporaries. Moreau's great paintings Prometheus, Oedipus,
and Heracles (all reproduced in this volume) probe the meaning of the classical
texts and express a heroic humanism appropriate for the challenges of his time. In
England, Burne-Iones, who shared with William Morris the ideals of the pre-Raphaelite
movement, returned again and again to the classical myths to support his search for
purity and beauty in the past. In The Tower of Brass (1888), he focuses on Danaë's feelings
as the tower is built, not on the lust of Zeus and the anger of Acrisius. In the Pygmalion
Series (1878) and the Perseus Series (1887), Burne-Iones turns from the anger of
the gods and the violence of the hero to the ideals of piety, chivalry, and chaste love.
Yet these very ideals involve the psychological and sexual tensions that Freud
(1856-1939) at the same time was beginning to explore.