Ariadne1.0207_Waterhouse

Ariadne1.0207_Waterhouse

Wikipedia Commons
Ovid Met. 4.605-11
Ovid Heroides 10
alt URL for Ov. Her. 10 in Loeb
Catullus, 64.50-201

Apollod. Libr. 2.2-4

John William Waterhouse, 1849-1917, "Ariadne," oil on canvas, 1898, J. Henderson Collection, Britain.

Ariadne, often depicted by painters as sleeping obliviously as Theseus departs, here too reclines still on the bed where she and Theseus have spent the night. Perhaps her red robe suggests her guilt for having foresaken her family and homeland, perhaps also the involvement of this night has led to her complicit unchastity. Waterhouse seems to allude to Ariadne's imminent rescue by the presence of two spotted leopards lounging beneath her couch, suggesting that Bacchus will soon arrive.

The image at right is in the public domain and protected by Creative Commons.

OGCMA entries for Ariadne are not utterly demarcated from usages of "Ariadne" (sola). It would seem that depictions of the Minoid immediately after her abandonment qualifies as "Ariadne" while usages treating her rescue by Dionysos go in as "DionysosAriadne".

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, 1400 – 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.