![]() ![]() Although I show ten paintings below, they are a small selection of what I think are the very best. This story, and its well-known earlier telling by Virgil, has been most popular with composers, writers, and painters, even up to the present. He then spent three years avoiding women, in spite of their attraction to him, and brought shade to an exposed meadow, with his singing – which leads on to the next myth. Orpheus tried to persuade the ferryman to take him back across the River Styx into the Underworld, but was refused. As he tried to grasp her, his hands clutched at the empty air. The moment that he did, she faded away, back into Hades’ realm. The couple trekked up through the gloom, and were just reaching the brighter edge of the Underworld when Orpheus could resist no longer, and looked back to make sure that his wife was still coping with the journey. Persephone summoned Eurydice, and let Orpheus take her back, on the strict understanding that at no time until he reached the earth above could he look back, or she would be taken back into the Underworld for ever. He then played his lyre, music so beautiful that those bound to eternal chores were forced to stop and listen: Tantalus, Ixion, the Danaids, even Sisyphus paused and sat on the rock which he normally tried to push uphill. He said that, if he was unable to return with her to life on earth, then he too would stay in the Underworld with her. He came across Persephone and her husband Hades, and pleaded his case before them. Orpheus was heart-broken, and mourned her so badly that he descended through the gate of Tartarus to Hades to try to get her released from death. It was a wedding marred by tragedy: after the ceremony, as Eurydice was wandering in joy with Naiads in a meadow, she was bitten by a snake on the heel, and died. Ovid links to this story through Hymen, the god of marriage, and the wedding of Eurydice to the outstanding musician and bard Orpheus. Ovid ended Book 9 of his Metamorphoses with some myths which posed painters problems, but opens Book 10 with one of the greatest and most enduring stories of the European canon: that of Orpheus and Eurydice. ![]()
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