Atlas2.0002_Stockwell

Other Source?
Ovid Met. 8.542-9.133

Hylton Stockwell, "Atlas," c. 1993. British Airways Compass Centre, West London.

Atlas was son of Titan Iapetus and Clymene, and Oceanid. For his role in the Titanomachy, Zeus relegated Atlas to the punishment of ever bearing the vault of heaven on his shoulders and to guard the pillars of heaven. Some think of him as the father of Calypso, others the father of Hesperides or of the Pleiades.

A monochrome photograph of a statue of a male figure holding an armillary sphere, with "COMPASS" written below it.

The sculpture was commissioned by British Airways. The globe itself is a three-dimensional version of the Compass Centre's logo. Thackara and Lloyd, 85 "The subject implies global travel and commercial domination and reflects the company's sloga, 'one world'."

See Davina Thackara and Fran Lloyd, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Public Sculpture of Britain, 13 (University of Liverpool Press, 2011), 245-46. (Photo at left is theirs.)

Cf. OGCMA0255Atlas_Lawrie

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.