In Greek and Roman mythology centaurs were creatures with the upper body of a human, down to the waist, fused onto the body of a horse, with all its four legs. Although some tales about centaurs suggest otherwise, in general they represented the lower appetites and behaviours of humans, and were more like wild horses than people. They were known for their fights with Lapiths, an Aeolian tribe, against whom they wielded rocks and limbs of trees. Centaurs persisted in legends and stories well into the Middle Ages, and are the subject of this weekend’s two articles about paintings.

Piero di Cosimo’s assembly of Tritons and Nereids, with Satyrs and Centaurs painted in about 1500-05 shows an odd range of centaur-like creatures, and is believed to have been commissioned for the Palazzo Vespucci.

Those in Böcklin’s Fight of the Centaurs (1873) are behaving more in character, in hand-to-hand combat, and by wielding rocks.

But Eugène Delacroix had better to report.

In the Poetry cupola of the Library of the National Assembly in Paris, Delacroix painted The Education of Achilles. This shows the myth of the young Achilles with a bow and arrow, riding on the back of his tutor Chiron the centaur, on the steep slopes of Mount Pelion. This was to become one of Delacroix’s favourite motifs.

His last known pastel painting, and one of his finest, is The Education of Achilles, painted in about 1862, showing the same scene of the ‘wisest and justest of all the centaurs’ Chiron teaching Achilles to hunt. The artist gave this to his longstanding friend Aurore Dudevant, better known under her pen name of George Sand.

Following the tradition of Nicolas Poussin, Achille Etna Michallon (a namesake of Achilles) set mythological figures in some of his finished landscape paintings. His Landscape: Theseus Pursuing the Centaurs from 1821 shows the Greek hero about to throw his spear at a galloping centaur.

Franz von Stuck added centaurs to his repertoire of mythical beasts in his Fantastic Hunt (1890). Here an archer centaur has buried his arrow into the right axilla of a deer-like variant, perhaps resembling Actaeon after Diana’s vicious metamorphosis. The deer-centaur’s legs have already buckled under him, and his hands claw at the air in his agony.

There are two major myths involving centaurs that have been painted extensively, both picturing them at their worst, at a wedding feast that turned into a pitched battle, and the attempted abduction of the wife of Hercules.

The account of the former is given by Nestor in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and is one of a pair of primaeval battles said to have established world order: that between the Titans and the Gods ended the heavenly Titanomachy, and that between the Lapiths and Centaurs ended the earthly Centauromachy.

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 Hippodame off by her hair. The other centaurs followed suit by each seizing a woman of their choice, turning the wedding feast into utter chaos, more 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. Nestor details a succession of grisly accounts of Lapiths and Centaurs killed. Gryneus the centaur ripped up the altar and crushed two Lapiths with its weight, only to have his eyeballs gouged out by a Lapith using the prongs of some antlers. Not content with using the objects around them as weapons, they started using their own lances and swords.

When the centaur Petraeus was trying to uproot a whole oak tree, the groom Pirithous pinned the centaur to the tree-trunk with his lance. Nestor also tells of the success of Caeneus, formerly Caenis, in killing five centaurs. The centaur Latreus taunted Caeneus, so the latter wounded the centaur with his spear. Latreus thrust his lance in Caeneus’ face, but was unable to hurt him, so he tried with his sword, which broke against the invulnerable Caeneus, leaving him to finish the centaur off with thrusts of his own sword.

The centaurs then united to try to overwhelm Caeneus by crushing him under their combined weight. Just as they thought they had succeeded, Caeneus was transformed into a bird and flew out from underneath them. With that the survivors dispersed, the Lapiths having won the day.

Piero di Cosimo’s The Fight between Lapiths and Centaurs (1500-15) is my favourite among the earlier paintings, and remains one of its best-structured and complete accounts. In the centre foreground, Hylonome embraces and kisses the dying Cyllarus, a huge arrow-like spear resting underneath them. Immediately behind them, on 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, Lapiths and Centaurs wielding clubs and other weapons at one another.

Towards the end of his life, Peter Paul Rubens painted this brilliant oil sketch of The Rape of Hippodame (c 1637-38). At the right, Eurytus is trying to carry off 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.

That became the finished painting, The Rape of Hippodame (Lapiths and Centaurs) (1636-38), which remains faithful to Rubens’ sketch and its composition. Facial expressions, particularly that of the Lapith at the left bearing a sword, are particularly powerful.

Luca Giordano’s later painting of the Battle of Lapiths and Centaurs from 1688 lacks the narrative structure of Piero di Cosimo’s, and covers later action than Rubens’. As a result, its story has become a little lost in the mêlée of battle.

Sebastiano Ricci’s The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs from about 1705 has similar problems, although it does use multiplex narrative to help. In the left background, Hippodame is seen being carried away by Eurytus, and to the right there are further scenes of abduction.

Francesco Solimena’s Battle between Lapiths and Centaurs (1735-40) puts multiple abductions in the foreground, with pitched battles taking place behind.

Tomorrow I’ll look at paintings of the fight between Nessus and Hercules, and how Nessus got his revenge.