Mythology

Antique Prints of Classical Mythology

This category brings together original antique prints depicting the myths, legends and divine subjects of ancient Greece and Rome, produced by European engravers and publishers from the 16th through the 19th century. Classical mythology was among the most enduring and productive sources of imagery for European print-making across this period, drawing on the inexhaustible store of narrative, allegory and symbolism that the ancient world had bequeathed to European culture and that artists, patrons and publishers continued to find relevant and compelling across four centuries of artistic production.

The myths of the Olympian gods — the stories of Jupiter and Juno, Venus and Mars, Diana, Apollo, Mercury, Neptune and their companions — provided artists with subjects of great narrative richness and allegorical potential. Scenes of the birth of Venus, the rape of Persephone, the labours of Hercules, the voyage of Jason, the fall of Phaethon and the countless other episodes of classical mythology were engraved from paintings by Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Poussin and their successors, creating a body of print imagery that communicated the canon of classical narrative to audiences who encountered it through prints before they had access to the paintings from which the engravings derived.

Allegorical subjects — the personifications of the virtues, the seasons, the elements and the liberal arts that drew on the vocabulary of classical mythology — appear alongside narrative subjects, connecting the tradition of mythological print-making to the broader decorative and emblematic traditions of European art. These allegorical prints, often produced as series depicting complementary subjects, were used in decorative schemes as well as collected for their intrinsic interest.

The illustration of classical texts — Homer, Ovid, Virgil and their interpreters — generated another major stream of mythological print production, from the illustrated editions of the Metamorphoses produced from the 16th century onwards to the neoclassical illustrations of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These book illustrations, detached from their original publications and preserved as individual prints, carry the dual interest of literary and artistic history.

Antique mythology prints are collected for their narrative and allegorical content, their artistic quality and their connection to the classical tradition that defined European cultural identity across the period of their production.