Not a Greek myth, this tragic love story is the ultimate ancestor to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and other major works. Here are the best paintings.
myth
Dancers, fauns, and the inevitable femmes fatales dominated his paintings before the outbreak of war.
How you mustn’t look at what shouldn’t be seen: how Pentheus was torn limb from limb by his mother and aunts.
Exploring representations of women, from Amazons to Salome, in a series of thought-provoking images.
At the heart of Deianira’s letter to Hercules was the strange story of his enslavement to Omphale. Here are the paintings.
A puzzling painting of a lone woman, wrestling with inner turmoil; a trap laid by a dying Centaur; a king with a thing for Hercules, and his promotion to being a saint.
A challenge to painters: a story of a gender-changing seer, a nymph who becomes no more than an acoustic effect, and a young man who dies of self-love.
He explored new and recurrent themes, including the dark and erotic side of Eve, the Greek sphinx, and made an early painting of movement in dance.
One of the strangest of all myths, only two painters managed to approximate Ovid’s account.
Another narrative painter in Germany around the turn of the 20th century, he is known for his symbolism and femmes fatales.
The Eclectic Light Company 