Ganymede: Encyclopedia II - Ganymede - Ganymede in ancient arts

Ganymede - Ganymede in ancient arts

In Athens, vase-painters often depicted the mythological story, which was so suited to the all-male symposium or formal banquet. The Ganymede myth was treated in recognizable contemporary terms, illustrated with common behavior of homoerotic courtship rituals. On an Attic red-figure vase (ca 450 BCE) in the Louvre, Zeus pursues Ganymede on one side, while on the other side the youth runs away, rolling along a hoop while holding aloft a crowing cock (presumably a courtship gift from Zeus) [1]. On a vase by the "Achilles Painter" Ganymede also flees with a cock. Ganymede is usually depicted as a well-developed, muscular youth, albeit one engaged in incongruously infantile activities (such as rolling a hoop down the street.)

Leochares (about B.C. 350), a Greek sculptor of Athens who was engaged with Scopas on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus cast a bronze group of Ganymede and the Eagle, a work remarkable for its ingenious composition, which boldly ventures to the verge of what is allowed by the laws of sculpture, and also for its charming treatment of the youthful form as it soars into the air. It is apparently imitated in a well-known marble group in the Vatican, half life-size. Such Hellenistic gravity-defying feats were influential in the arts of the Baroque.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ganymede in ancient arts", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki