The Goddess and Painters
The Muses, those aspects of the goddess who act as inspirers of art, were each aligned with a particular artform. Those forms were, generally, different types of poetry; music and dance. Painting and sculpture were not mentioned, perhaps because these were thought to be fields of simple manual labour, not requiring divine inspiration. The notion of the "Great Artist" begins perhaps with Phidias and the other Greek sculptors and painters who decorated the Parthenon, but was not full-formed in our culture until relatively recent times, in the Renaissance. That said, there are few better ways to observe the presence of knowledge of the goddess among the cultured class of a society than by examining the paintings and sculptures produced by and for that class.
That an artist paints a "Birth of Venus" need not necessarily mean that he was aware of, or interested in, goddess lore, for there have been times when there was a fashion for all things related to classical Greece, and a painting of the goddess may have been made for that reason only. However, detailed examination of the painting, looking for consistent use of related symbolism, could indicate the level of awareness of the painter.
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The Birth of Venus Sandro Botticelli Botticelli lived in the early Renaissance, so his works tell us also about the Medici for whom he painted. The goddess-lore references in this painting include the fertilising wind (Aolus top left) who carries the goddess' messenger Hermes (perhaps as Cupid); the shower of roses, the fir tree (back right), the sea, and the fact that she is standing on it, the scallop, her blonde hair, the nymph and her red hair and the flowers on her costume. This catalogue of goddess symbolism includes both Classical (Greek) and Celtic references, which may have been specified by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici when he commissioned it for his villa at Castello. Botticelli (and his 'pagan' paintings, the other being PrimaVera) slipped from public view for many years. His celebrity was revived by his inclusion in Vasari's Lives, and by the interest shown by those tireless goddess-stalkers of the 1800s, the Pre-Raphaelites. |
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The Birth of Venus Cabanel was a famed painter of nudes; and his rich patrons included Napoleon 111. This painting was hanging for the Academy in Paris, the Salon, when a rival exhibition, the Salon des Refusès, marked the beginning of the Impressionist movement, a movement which was more for the common people, who had less feeling for the classical references than Cabanel's upper class audience. The painting refers to the myth that Venus was born from the ocean foam, and the number of cherubim, five, is a reference to her astronomical association with that number. That Cabanel (and his upper-class clientelle) was aware of this obscure fact implies that in the late nineteenth century, there was a great deal of knowledge of goddess lore in Parisian high society. |
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The Birth of Venus
Bouguereau was a fashionable late-Victorian artist whose high-Salon style can be compared with that of his contemporaries Leighton; Draper, and Alma-Tadema. All four painted on specific goddess themes in a realist manner; belonged to the highest academies and sold their works at high prices. All four were quickly forgotten in the new century, when war and new art movements changed the public's taste in artworks. Bouguereau dealt with goddess themes extensively, either as the goddess herself (Spring), priestesses (The Young Priestess) or young women or girls, always barefooted. His works indicate deep research into arcane literature, as in this painting, which bears a clear relationship to a obscure second-century description of the goddess Isis ...and when
she was come there, and had trodden with her rosy feet on the top
of the trembling waters, then the deep sea became exceeding calm
on its whole surface, and at her will, ....appeared her servitors
from the deep.....the daughters of Nereus singing melodiously; Portunus
with his bristled and rough beard of azure; Salacia with her bosom
full of fish; Palaemon the little driver of the dolphin; and the
bands of Triton trumpeters leaping hither and thither, the one blowing
on his shell with heavenly noise, another turning aside with a silken
veil the burning heat of the fierce sun, another holding her mirror
before his lady's eyes......Such was the company which followed
Venus marching towards the middest Ocean |
Other Artists with a specific interest in goddess themes
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This list may be extended further and further, by, for example, doing a search on the word Ophelia, the Shakespearean character who stands for the goddess, and whose watery suicide symbolises a lament for the lost goddess. Ophelia paintings might therefore be called Death of Venus paintings. |
The large number of artists concerned with goddess themes in the nineteenth century (and the parallel movement in poetry) might indicate that there was a large social movement involved, consisting mainly of a rich cultured elite and their entertaining; talented, protégés, which while learning (and inventing) more and more of goddess lore, grew apart from the poorer masses. When those masses returned to civilian pursuits after WW1, the artistic secrets of the Victorians were of little interest to the new leaders of style...the practical middle class, for whom William Morris was a designer of linoleum patterns, not a High Poet blessed by the Great Muse.
