DionysosBirth2.0001_Lynes

DionysosBirth2.0001_Lynes

Met website
Ovid Met. 3.313-15
Apollodorus Libr. 3.4.3

George Platt Lynes, "The Second Birth of Dionysus," ca. 1937, gelatin silver print, Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number X.690

Morford & Lenardon include this photograph with the caption: "From 1937 to 1940 Lynes began a series of works based upon Greek myth, including Endymion, Narcissus, Danaë, and the birth of Dionysus shown here. ... The naked figure of Zeus, here erotically charged, in contrast to his representation in the vase depicting the birth of Dionysus [i.e. Alkimedes Painter red-figure], is frozen in the moment of the agonizing pain, not to say horror, of the birth, which itself is represented in a disconcertingly and clinically realistic fashion."

Lynes' "Danae"
Lynes' "Endymion and Selene" Lynes'

Lynes, Dionysus Birth

LACMA website cites this bibliography:
Schaefer, Scott, et al. European Painting and Sculpture in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1987.
Conisbee, Philip et al. The Ahmanson Gifts: European Masterpieces in the Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991.

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.