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This was a coin from Ancient Greece from between the time  period of 487-430 BCE. It has both a Sphinx and Amphora pictured on it.

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A painting representing Medea debating whether she should kill her children or not. (Roman mural, Casa de Discorii, Pompeii, c. 1st c. CE.)

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The witch Medea flees Corinth in a flying chariot drawn by a pair of dragon-serpents, encircled by the aureole of the sun. Her children lie dead on a sacrificial altar. An elderly nurse stands over them, tearing at her hair in lamentation. Their father Jason approaches from left. A pair of winged Poenae (Retributions) witness the scene.

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Archaeologists discovered a site that was believed to have been used by Glauce; the soon to be bride murdered by Medea. After the painful burns from the poisoned robe attacked her body, she was said to have jumped into the fountain for relief. Now this moment has been dedicated to her.

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Terracotta volute-krater from 400 BC. Depicting battle between the Greeks and Amazons.

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This is a mythological painting done by Charles van loo and is showing Medea having killed her children and has set the temple ablaze flying away on a chariot drawn by dragons.

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A sculpture of Zeus and Ganymede from 470 BC

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This is an image of Medea and Jason that was painted on an Ancient Greek amphora

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Aristotle was a Greek philosopher. This is a bust of Aristotle by Lysippos which was made in approximately 400 BC. He was known for the advancements he made in math, science, and logic.

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Greek Thrace Diobol Apollonia Pontica Coin

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Apollonia Pontica, Thrace, AR diobol, 450-400 BC

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This artifact depicts Medea boiling a ram for Pelias. She demonstrates her powers by chopping up a an old ram, and then making it young again. She told Pelias daughters she could do the same for their dad. When she performs the same task on Pelias she does not use her magic causing Pelias to stay dead.

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This Bronze mirror was created around 480BC to 450BC and displayed a variety of elements–human, animal, and mythological–animate this mirror disk.

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This is a bust of Pericles and he has on a Corinthian helmet. This bust was sculpted by Kresilas around 440 bc and was originally made of bronze but has multiple Roman replicas.

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The sculpture "Medea," created in 1876 by William Wetmore Story.  Represents the character of Medea. Known for her tragic and complex story. 

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This sculpture of Jason with the Golden Fleece by Pietro Francavilla was created in 1589 and located in the Bargello Museum in Florence.

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This Attic Column - Krater, made during 470-460 BCE, depicts Jason about to take the "Golden Fleece." It offers a glimpse into the artistic and social context of ancient Greece during the time of Euripides, (an ancient Greek tragedian, who wrote Medea around 431 BCE, one of his most powerful and best-known plays.)

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Three female sculptures from the Parthenon - made between 438-432 BCE. these women represent individually in culture.

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Golden plated plates and decor, these were held by some people back in 400-450 BC.

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Riace Bronzes- cast around 460-450 BC were found by a amateur scuba diver in the sea near Riace, Italy.

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La Statue de Medee (Paris)- The Medea statue is a monument to Medea, depicting her horrific acts upon her kids in the pursuit of revenge against Jason.

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This interesting vase was created in 400 B.C. Derives from the Greek culture. Each side of the vase represents a part of the story of Medea. The vase represents when Medea boiled the ram for the Peliades. Medea is the figure located on the right side, posing as a marble statue which was popular in ancient Athens at the time. This ancient piece is located in the Harvard Art Museum.

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In the early stages of Greek art, depictions of Aphrodite showed her clothed and lacking unique attributes that would set her apart from other goddesses. It wasn't until the remarkable Greek sculptors of the 5th century BCE that she gained distinct characteristics. One particularly renowned sculpture of Aphrodite, crafted by Praxiteles for the people of Cnidus, stands out. This sculpture, showcasing a complete female nude, eventually served as a prototype for remarkable Hellenistic artworks like the Venus de Milo (2nd century BCE).

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This sculpture represents the Priestess of Goddess Hecate. In ancient Greek mythology/religion she is known as the Goddess of magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. Medea is often compared as a sorcerer throughout the story especially when she poisons the dress and crown. Hecate represents women and the injustices they face in sexist culture and Medea also crosses paths with these issues in the story line. Both of these women also grew malicious after being wronged by others and they sought revenge through sorcery and poisoning.

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This marble head depicts the witch Medea as well as the two daughters of Pelias. Pelias, king of lolkos was boiled by his two daughters after Medea convinced them to commit such an act. This marble head was most likely decorated the parapet surrounding the Altar of the Twelve Gods.

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The Helios Red-Figure vase was created in Athens, Greece. It depicts Helios, the sun god, riding on a chariot. Medea was the granddaughter of Helios in the play.

Source: https://www.worldhistory.org/image/5120/helios-red-figure-vase/

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This statue is of a female with her arms raised. This statue is supposed to be Madea. They claimed that Madea was a strong character because she was a clever woman who knew how to reach her goals.

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This represented Glauce wearing the gown that Medea had given to her, but because the dress is poisonous, it begins to kill her. This can explain why in the artifact, she seems to be seeking help. This sculpture truly shows the chaos of what was happening at this moment.

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This statue, "Zeus of Otricoli", represents the religious beliefs and mythology at the time.

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Medea holding a knife. which emphasizing the darker aspects of her character and her association with revenge to kill her son

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Terracotta depicting Hippolytus- circa 330-310 BC

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Hippolytus was a play written by Greek playwright Euripides. It was first performed in Athens in 428 BC. The play depicts the myth of Hippolytus, son of Greek hero Theseus, and the events leading to his death.

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Chandler Thornton - Medea Artifact Museum

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Chandler Thornton - Medea Artifact Museum

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Southern Italian vase "Madea in Her Chariot" - circa 400BC

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Discobolus is an iconic sculpture, originally created in bronze by the artist Myron around 460-450BC. The Romans duplicated this sculpture, leading to its popularity.

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The Discobolus or "discus thrower" is one of the most iconic artworks of classical antiquity. Originally sculpted in bronze by an Athenian man called Myron (born in the fortress-city of Eleutherae in the 5th century BC), the statue has gained fame largely through its many bronze and marble copies made by the Romans.

The sculpture was well-known in the ancient world. The Roman rhetorician and satirist Lucian of Samosata (c. AD 125 - c. AD 180) mentioned Myron in a work called Philopseudes. In a dialogue between characters Tychiades and Philocles, we find the lines:

Have you never noticed as you came in that beautiful one in the court, by Demetrius the portrait-sculptor?' 'Is that the one with the quoit,-leaning forward for the throw, with his face turned back towards the hand that holds the quoit, and one knee bent, ready to rise as he lets it go?' 'Ah, that is a fine piece of work, too,-a Myron;...

~ From The Works of Lucian of Samosata (2011, translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler)

The Discobolus is a physically gorgeous, young male athlete frozen in the pose of launching his disc. Although he is involved in a demanding situation, his face and body are unusually relaxed and composed. His head is turned towards his sporting equipment (but in some restorations he is "wrongly" looking ahead). In his 1956 book The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, the British art historian and aesthete Kenneth Clark (1903-1983) observed that Myron captures two particular qualities - rhythmos (harmony and balance) and symmetria (bodily proportion). Regarding the action of the discus thrower, Clark wrote:
Myron has created the enduring pattern of athletic energy. He has taken a moment of action so transitory that students of athletics still debate if it is feasible...to a modern eye, it may seem that Myron's desire for perfection has made him suppress too rigorously the sense of strain in the individual muscles.
Over the centuries, notes Dr. Ian Jenkins ( 'The Many Sides of Myron's Discobolus', June 2012, the British Museum), a curator at the British Museum and expert in ancient Greek sculpture, the statue has acquired many meanings. In addition to being a depiction of athletic perfection, it has been a paradigm of homoeroticism and a piece of political identification. According to Jenkins, the Discobolus is "arguably the most famous statue in the world."

In the twentieth century, however, the legacy of the Discobolus was significantly darkened due to its connection with the Third Reich. Hitler was so infatuated with the statue that in 1938, he bought a copy of it (known as the Discobolus Lancellotti or the Discobolus Palombara) for five million lire from Galeazzo Ciano, the Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy from 1936 to 1943. (Click here to see a photo of Hitler with the statue in Munich).

In an article on BBC Culture, British art critic Alastair Sooke writes that the Nazis drew much aesthetic inspiration from the art of ancient Greece and the Discobolus in particular featured prominently in the opening sequence of the of the two-party 1938 film , which documented the Berlin Olympics (also known as the "Nazi Olympics") that had taken place two years earlier. Olympia was directed by the acclaimed German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), who, in 1935, had made the innovative Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. [Although, her involvement with the Nazis greatly damaged her film career, Riefenstahl lived a long and fairly comfortable life. She denied knowing about the Holocaust and won several libel cases.]

In his article, Alastair Sooke quotes Professor Rolf Michael Schneider of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich:

Without the Classical tradition, the Nazi visual ideology would have been rather different. Like all hunters, they hunted for a priceless object - and as the statue could not say no, they used the Discobolus for their perverse ideologies. The perfect Aryan body, the white colour [of the marble], the beautiful, ideal white male: to put it very bluntly, it became a kind of image of the Herrenrasse or 'master race' - that's what the Nazis called themselves and the Germans.

The Discobolus became a poster boy for Nazi causes and although the copy of the statue in Germany was returned to Italy in 1948 (where it was placed in Rome's National Museum five years later), Sooke concludes, "it would be a long time before the taint of its association with Hitler disappeared."

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Further Reading:

The Art of Greece and Rome (2004) by Susan Woodford

Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 (1982) by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny

The Greek Body (2009) by Ian Jenkins

The Discobolus (2012) by Ian Jenkins

The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (2000) by Jonathan Petropoulos

Art and Politics in the Third Reich (1999) by Jonathan Petropoulos

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Image Credits:

Featured: Discobolus in the National Roman Museum by User "Livioandronico2013", CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Other (1): Discobolus by User "MatthiasKabel", CC BY 2.5, Wikipedia

Other (2): Discobolus by User "Valerio Perticone", CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia

Other (3): Discobolus by User "Carole Raddato", CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Other (4). Adolf Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl by User "Beyond My Ken", CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, Wikimedia Commons

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Published by Tulika Bahadur

India-born, London-educated, global network. Always happy to travel. Say hello if you are a reader! Send all commercial enquiries regarding content creation, curatorship, educational engagements, art buying/commissioning/rental, building a collection, brand collaborations with artists, and cultural experiences, events and tours to tulika@onartandaesthetics.com (DON'T FORGET TO CC: tulikabahadur@gmail.com). Please introduce yourself before forwarding press releases and newsletters. I will especially remember you! IG: @tulikabahadur (personal) & @connoisseurscircle (social club). View all posts by Tulika Bahadur

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The Discobolus or "discus thrower" is one of the most iconic artworks of classical antiquity. Originally sculpted in bronze by an Athenian man called Myron (born in the fortress-city of Eleutherae in the 5th century BC), the statue has gained fame largely through its many bronze and marble copies made by the Romans.

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Allie Boatwright - Medea Artifact Museum 

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Allie Boatwright - Medea Artifact Museum 

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Hippocrates was a Greek physician. This image is from approximately 400 BC. He is known as the "Father of Medicine."