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Artist: unknown
Date: early 16th century
Culture: Central Italian
Materials: Pen and brown ink
The main figure, although unfinished, represents the mythological Greek hero Orpheus. According to the lore, he was a musician and poet and is depicted in the drawing playing his lyre. Animals were drawn to Orpheus because of the beauty of his music. A colonnaded facade symbolizing the Septizonium, an antique Roman edifice that was demolished in 1589, sits in the background.

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Artist: Joachim Patinir
Date: 1520 - 1524
Culture: Flemish Northern Renaissance
Patinir brilliantly combines biblical imagery with classical mythological influences. An angel on the cliff, two more accompanying the souls not far away, and a few more in the background with other small souls allow us to distinguish the paradise on the left as a Christian heaven, not the Elysian Fields. The three-headed hellhound, Cerberus, appears to recognize the inferno portrayed on the right as Hades, linking it with Greek mythology. Charon at the center of the painting is on his famous boat in the River Styx. Charon is the son of Erebus and Nyx. His job was to ferry the souls of the departed who had received burial rituals over the rivers Styx and Acheron. He was given the penny that was placed in the corpse's mouth as payment.

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The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus) Painting

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The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus) Painting

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Artist: Diego Velázquez

Date: Roughly 1644-48

Culture: Contemporary Baroque

Venus is a Roman goddess intimately associated with love and beauty like her Greek counterpart Aphrodite. Love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory are all among her symbolism. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people via her son, Aeneas, who survived the collapse of Troy and escaped to Italy.

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Artist: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
Date: 1596
Culture: naturalistic Baroque
The Bacchus painting depicts a young androgynous man in disguise as the famous Bacchus who is equivalent to Dionysus. Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and pleasure. Caravaggio utilized the youthful beauty of a boy as a model dressing him up as the Roman God Bacchus, who also symbolized fertility, inebriation, and ecstasy, conjuring questions of morality through sensual gestures.

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Artist: Sandro Botticelli

Date: 1486

Culture: Florentine Renaissance

The birth of Venus, once again the Roman goddess of love and beauty is depicted in this painting. A tall and again nude Venus is arising from the ocean in a seashell, being drawn towards the shore by the God of wind Zephyrus, who is holding the nymph Chloris. On the right is the Hora of springtime, who waits to greet Venus with a cloak covered in pink flowers.

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Many art movements explored Greek Mythology, the two main periods depicted in the paintings are the Renaissance Art from 14th to 17th century and Baroque Art from approximately 1600-1750. During the Renaissance, artists from all around the world were interested in recreating Greek mythology in their work and giving different perspectives. Afterall, the Renaissance as a cultural movement was a resurgence of interest in classical mythology. The works chosen illustrates how profoundly Greek mythology influenced Western civilization.   Although the Baroque period was preoccupied with attracting people back to the church via the use of religious topics in art, it nonetheless embraced Greek mythology. Botticelli, Caravaggio, Patinir, Velázquez, and the unknown Italian painter with all their different art styles, all found inspiration from myths. The names of the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology were adapted to Roman philosophy: Aphrodite to Venus and Dionysus to Bacchas. The inspiration from different iconic mythologies in art continues to this day.