EuropaREFERENCE_Passerini

EuropaREFERENCE_Passerini

Gardner Museum
OGCMA s.v. "Europa"
Classical Sources:
Ovid Met. 2.835 - 75

Luisa Passerini (2002), Il Mito d'Europa: radici antiche per nuovi simboli (Florence: Giunti).

Passerini treats scores of graphic representations of the Europa (and Pasiphae) myth, from Cnossos and Selinunte to Jackson Pollock and Botero. A compelling essay is divided into these chapters:
I. La Leggenda
Parte Prima: Elementi del Mito
II. Il Toro
III. La Donna
IV. Il Mare, l'Isola, le Acque
V. Ibridi
Intermezzo
VI. Scherzo e Ornamento
Parte Seconda: Mutamenti e Contemporaneità
VII. La Politica, la Sfera Pubblica
VIII. Modernità: crisi, scienza e tecnica
IX. Trasformazioni del Femminile
X. Europa Fuori d'Europa

Image on the cover at right is P. Manship, "Flight of Europa" 1925 (Europa1.0202_Manship).

Europa developed a fondness for a particular bull in the herd which Zeus had bidden Hermes to drive her way, as she played with her friends on the seashore. Disguised as one of that herd then, the god relied on his handsomeness, though cloaked in bovine features, to draw the girl to closer intimacy until she mounted his back and rode into the waves. The abduction resulted in Europa's conceiving and bearing illustrious children on Crete — Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon. She was later worshipped in Crete as a goddess.

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.