Hephaestus1.0002_PieroDiCosimo

Wadsworth Atheneum
artsmia.org
Homer Il. 1.584-94

Piero di Cosimo, "The Finding of Vulcan on the Island of Lemnos," ca. 1495, Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Ar, inv. no. 32..

If the painting's title is correct — and it is not "Hylas and the Nymphs — six Sintian women care for the young god Hephaestus who, having fallen all day from Olympus and bashed a hole through that cloud, seems crippled but likely to recover.

Mythological scene with several figures in a verdant landscape, some carrying baskets of flowers and a lamb.

Why Piero changes the gender of Hephaestus' rescuers is uncertain. ML say that the narrative change offers a tender contrast to "the anger and violence of Zeus." (p. 125 caption)

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.