PrometheusBound1.0074

Gustave Moreau, 1826-1898, "Prometheus," 1868, oil on canvas, Musée National Gustave-Moreau, Paris, cat. 196.

Moreau painted prolifically, and typically with marvelous new contributions to classical myth. His canvas is customarily, as here, monumental (2.05 x 1.22 m) and dramatically colorful.

Some artists emphasize the painful torment of Prometheus' punishment. Moreau celebrates the heroic defiance.

Others choose to emphasize his activities before the binding.

Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound Prometheus: "See what I, a god, suffer at the hands of the gods." (91- 92) ... "I stopped mortals from fore-seeing their fate ... I planted in them blind hopes. ... And besides, I gave them fire." (248 - 52)

The Prometheus Myth resonated profoundly with artists throughout the 19th-century (and beyond). Reid lists A. Graf, Prometeo nella poesia (Torino, 1902); O. Raggio, "The Myth of Prometheus: its survival and metamorphosis up to the Eighteenth Century," JWCI 21 (1958) 44 - 62; R. Trousson, Le thème de Prométhée dans la littérature européenne, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1976). But this bibliography is only the start.