0175ApolloSunGod_Corneille2

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ovid Met.1.750-2.400

Michel Corneille the Younger, "Apollo and Thetis," early 18th Century, pen and ink, pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash and white opaque watercolor on tan laid paper, 24.3 x 34.4 cm. Crocker Art Museum, E. B. Crocker Collection

The sun-god Apollo leaves the couch of Tethys, the wife of Oceanus, each morning.

Worth exploring: the connection to Charles Lebrun's 1650 "Apollo Taking Leave of Tethys".

cf. Jacob DeWitt's "Apollo Verliest of Thetys"

A dynamic baroque drawing of classical figures, including a radiant deity, a goddess, a lion, and cherubs amidst clouds.

For Apollo and Thetis, consider Plato Republic 2.383: Aeschylus makes Thetis say that Apollo sang at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis.
In his wedding song, Apollo promises the bride that he will watch over her prodigious offspring. The promises are gradious. Later, however, after the death of Achilles, Thetis laments that “he who proclaimed these things … he it is who killed my son.” —Aesch. Frag. 350 Radt.

Several sources document Apollo's directing Paris' arrow at the slaying of Achilles: Hom. Od. 24.15-97, the Aethiopis, Ovid Metamorphoses12.850-64; see also Apollodorus Epitome 5.3-5 with Simpson's notes.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.