Myths and Legends: Pygmalion and the Statue

Pygmalion and the Statue. To find out more about Pygmalion and his statue, see this Wikipedia article: link; for information about the image: image source.

This shows the famous moment when Pygmalion adores the statue he has sculpted, before she comes to life. This was naturally a subject favored by artists; here are some more Pygmalion images.

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Myths and Legends: Pygmalion and the Statue.

Pygmalion and the Statue. To find out more about Pygmalion and his statue, see this Wikipedia article: link; for information about the image: image source.

Pygmalion, disgusted by the women around him, decided to sculpt a perfect woman... and he fell in love with the sculpture. Venus, the goddess of love, turned the statue into a woman, much to Pygmalion's delight; you can see him kissing the newly awakened statue in this painting by Jean Léon Gérôme. The story is told most famously by Ovid in his Metamophoses.

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Myths and Legends: Pygmalion

Venus and Pygmalion's Statue. To find out more about Pygmalion and his statue, see this Wikipedia article: link; for information about the image: image source.

The artist Pygmalion has, naturally enough, been a great source of inspiration for artists over the years. In this painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones you see an especially fantastic moment in the story, when the goddess Venus, on the left, brings Pygmalion's statue to life, on the right. This is just one in a series of paintings which Burne-Jones devoted to the Pygmalion story; this particular painting is called "The Godhead Fires." You can read a brief essay about the four paintings in Burne-Jones' Pygmalion series at The Victorian Web.

The first painting in the series is called "The Heart Desires."


The second painting is "The Hand Refrains."


The third painting is today's image, "The Godhead Fires."


The final painting in the series is "The Soul Attains."

You can also find more myths and legends for the week of January 1-7 here. For more information and links to the actual javascript code, see the Myths & Legends Widget Reference Page.