0813Pandora

0813Pandora_Cousin

ogcma@byu

ClCv241

Mastery

MythMatters

Hesiod Works and Days 59 - 105
Louvre.fr website

Jean Cousin the Elder, "Eva prima Pandora," 1538, Louvre, no. R.F. 2373

The painting prominently bears its own title in Latin on the signage above her head: Eve the first Pandora.

Pandora's left hand plays with the lid of the pyxis (jar) that made Pandora so famous, while the right arm rests her weight upon the image of death. She is here, therefore, as paradoxical as ever could be: blessings of hope remain in that jar and the curses of death settle upon men evermore.

Nude woman with skull and ornate vessel, labeled "EVA PRIMA PANDORA", in a dark grotto landscape.

"Cousin's painting explicitly identifies the biblical first woman, Eve, whose eating of the forbidden fruit causes humanity's Fall from grace, with 'the first Pandora,' the primal human female whom [Zeus and Hephaistos] created to plague mankind and bring the paradisal Golden Age to an end. With one hand on her jar (containing both blessings and woes), and the other on a skull (grim symbol of human mortality), she contemplates the paradox of her creation: all life's gifts (and potential evils) that belong to the material world reside in her jar; their release will introduce the bewildering mixture of pain and pleasure, strife and death, that Hesiod says have characterized human existence ever since woman's initial appearance on the earth." (Harris and Platner Plate 2

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, 1300 - 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.