CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN LITERATURE AND ART 701
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN AMERICAN ART
During the first century of the American Republic, mythological subjects were
often copied by schoolgirls from engravings (the illustrations for Pope's trans-
lation of the Iliad were a favorite source) or were imaginatively treated by women
in their spare time at home (see pages 60, 465, and 486). Artists who studied in
Europe copied paintings of classical subjects and exhibited them when they re-
turned. The earliest such exhibition, given in Boston in 1730 by John Smibert
(1688-1751), aroused great public interest. Ten years earlier, a Swedish immi-
grant, Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755), painted the earliest known American
mythological works, Bacchus and Ariadne (now in Detroit) and Bacchanal (now in
Philadelphia).
While the leading American painters (such as Copley, West, Allston, and
Vanderlyn) sometimes painted mythological subjects, American taste soon
turned to historical themes and to the dramatic potential of the American land-
scape. One of the best American mythological paintings is John Vanderlyn's Ari-
adne, painted in 1811 and now in Philadelphia (see Color Plate 16). It depicts the
scene described in Ovid's Heroides 10. 7-10, as Ariadne wakes to find herself de-
serted. When it was first exhibited it aroused interest and controversy. But by
Vanderlyn's time it was already clear that American painters would find mate-
rial in sources other than classical mythology.
In sculpture, however, the classical influence continued to be strong. Hora-
tio Greenough (1805-1852) used Pheidias' statue of Zeus at Olympia as the ba-
sis for his seated statue (1832-1839) of George Washington, now in the National
Museum of American History but planned originally for the Rotunda of the
Capitol. On the sides of Washington's throne are mythological reliefs, on one
side Apollo as the sun-god rising into the sky with his chariot and on the other
the infants Heracles and Iphicles with the serpents sent by Hera. Greenough
wanted Heracles to be an allegory of North America, which "struggles success-
fully with the obstacles and dangers of an incipient political existence."
A group of expatriate American artists living in Rome is described in
Hawthorne's The Marble Faun (1859). Among these was Harriet Hosmer (1820-
1908), whose busts of Medusa (illustrated on p. 511), and Daphne (both completed
in 1854) were meant to express her views on celibacy and beauty. Her Oenone was
based on Tennyson's poem Oenone rather than directly on Ovid's Heroides.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY SINCE 1900
Classical mythology has continued to be a vigorous source of inspiration for
artists since 1900. In France and Spain especially, Georges Braque (1882-1963)
and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) returned frequently to classical themes. Perhaps