The depiction of women in the illustrated works of Pierre Louys

by Paul Gervais

The illustrated novels of Pierre Louys are instructive in many ways. Primarily, of course, they reveal evolving artistic responses to the author’s prose and verse, thereby not just illustrating his personal vision but demonstrating- indirectly- what book purchasers were understood to want, and what publishers and their commissioned artists believed they could offer them, within the parameters of law and public decency. In other words, the nature of illustrations can be a record of changes in society- in attitudes to sexuality, gender and the status and rights of women.

Louys’ first books appeared in the last decade of the nineteenth century, notably Les Chansons de Bilitis in 1894 and Aphrodite in 1896. The earliest illustrated editions are distinctly reflective of their era, tacitly articulating contemporary attitudes towards the female gender and the position of women in society. Librairie Borel‘s 1899 edition of Aphrodite, illustrated by Antoine Calbet, is a case in point: his depictions of Chrysis reflect the Academic tradition of life studies, derived from the classical artistic tradition since the Renaissance, and the young Galilean courtesan is depicted very much in the style of Greek statues of Aphrodite and paintings of Venus by Botticelli, Tiziano Vecelli and others thereafter.

The title pages of the Calbet edition

Likewise, when Georges Rochegrosse provided plates for an edition of Ariadne in 1904, what he supplied was a very revealing reflection of the period’s conceptions of bacchantes- frenzied women. In the plate illustrated below, they are seen wreathed in ivy and flowers and leopard skin, about to tear apart the helpless Ariadne. Elsewhere in the same volume, Greek ladies were presented as sedate, respectable, elegant, graceful and beautiful- as in the illustration that accompanied the preamble to The House on the Nile by Paul Gervais, which is seen at the head of this post.

As I have described in other posts, numerous further illustrated editions of the various books written by Louys were to follow, both before and after his decease in 1925. A constant feature of these was women in greater or lesser states of undress, plates that faithfully responded to the text but also very consciously appealed to the primarily male collectors of fine art limited editions of books. Amongst these many examples, the most interesting are probably those designed by women. Those volumes worked on by Suzanne Ballivet, Mariette Lydis and Clara Tice are notable for the quality of their work and for the fact that the latter two were lesbian and brought their own sense of eroticism to their reactions to the texts. So, for example, in her plates for the 1934 edition of Les Chansons de Bilitis, Lydis’ vision of female lovers was far more intimate and subtly sensual than most of the works produced by male contemporaries- such as J A Bresval (see below). Other women who worked on the various titles by Louys included Renee Ringel (Aphrodite, 1944), Yna Majeska (Psyche, 1928), Guily Joffrin (Psyche, 1972) and editions of Bilitis illustrated by Jeanne Mammen, Genia Minache (1950), Carola Andries (1962) and Monique Rouver (1967). The frequency with which female illustrators were employed as the century passed is noticeable, although I hesitate to identify a distinctly feminine style.

Maritte Lydis, plate for Bilitis, 1934

Post-war, new editions of Louys introduced us to new conceptions of his female characters. J. A. Bresval illustrated an edition of Bilitis in 1957, his figures being very much inspired by contemporary film stars like Gina Lollobrigida and Brigitte Bardot. The women have a dark-haired fulsomeness typical of the period; the eroticism is rather cliched, such as the frontispiece to the book, which shows Bilitis with a lover: the latter kneels before her partner, embracing her waist and kissing her stomach; the standing woman cups her breasts in her hands and throws back her head in a highly stereotypical soft-porn rendering of female ecstasy.

However, by 1961 and Raymond Brenot’s watercolours for a new edition of Sanguines, we see a new aesthetic of the female body beginning to emerge: the bosoms may be just as fantastical, but there is a slenderness and, in some of the clothes, a sense of a more liberated and relaxed mood. Pierre-Laurent (Raymond) Brenot (1913-98) was a painter who was also very much in demand to design record sleeves, advertisements and fashion plates (for such couturiers as Dior, Balenciaga, Ricci and Lanvin). More tellingly, he is known as the ‘father of the French pin-up’- consider, for example, his advert for lingerie manufacturer Jessos- “Comme maman, je porte un Jessos” declares a young teen with pigtails, seated with her blouse unbuttoned to reveal her bra (“just like my mum’s”); I have discussed this style of marketing in another post. Brenot’s poster designs, for consumer goods, holiday destinations and films and theatres, regularly featured glamorous young women and, when this work declined during the later 1960s, he returned to painting, producing many young female nudes.

Brenot, Parrhasius in ‘The Wearer of Purple’ from Sanguines

What has to be observed, though, is that most of the nudity portrayed by Brenot was not justified by the actual stories in Sanguines. There are some naked slaves in The Wearer of Purple (see below), and Callisto in A New Sensation does share a bed with the narrator, but most of the rest of the stories are really quite respectable and sex-free (by the standards of Louys), being more concerned with psychology than sexuality. What we see, therefore, is evidence for the tendency to treat the works of Louys as a platform for erotic illustration. Frequently, this was a distinct element in the author’s stories, but it seems that he had acquired a reputation for sexiness which was then applied more liberally, presumably in the knowledge that the name would sell. The same criticism can, in truth, be made of Georges Rochegrosse’s depiction of the bacchae in the 1904 edition of Ariadne (see earlier): what he depicted might perhaps be implied in the text, but what Louys wrote doesn’t wholly warrant the nudity that we see:

“They wore fox skins tied over their left shoulders. Their hands waved tree branches and shook garlands of ivy. Their hair was so heavy with flowers that their necks bent backwards; the folds of their breasts streamed with sweat, the reflections on their thighs were setting suns, and their howls were speckled with drool.”

Ariadne, c.2

Brenot, Callisto in ‘A New Sensation’ from Sanguines

The men who feature in Brenot’s illustrations often seem hesitant, ill at ease or, even, embarrassed at being discovered with the women in their company- his take on the ‘satyrs’ with nymph in a scene from ‘The Wearer of Purple’ is a case in point. In Louys’ story, this is an incident involving a slave girl being assaulted by two other servants so as to create a titillating composition for the the artist Parrhasius to paint. As we can see in the reproduction below, the satyrs appear afraid of the young woman, having lost all their accustomed priapism, whilst she strikes me as indifferent to their presence and in fully control of the situation. Given Brenot’s later output, it’s almost certainly overstating things to say that these plates reflect shifts in social attitudes.

Brenot, two satyrs & a nymph in ‘The Wearer of Purple’ in Sanguines

Coming right up to date, the 1999 edition of Aphrodite demonstrates how visions of women may have developed and advanced (or not). The book was issued in three volumes, the first two being illustrated by two male comic book artists, Milo Manara and Georges Bess respectively. Both have distinctly erotic styles and the results strike me as being, in essence, highly accomplished and artistic reproductions of glamour photography and lesbian porn; for example, George Bess’ picture of the reclining woman, which faces the start of Book 2, chapter 1 of the story, seems to me to be drawn in a style very much influenced by Mucha or Georges du Feure: the streaming hair and the encroaching, twisting foliage all have the hallmarks of Art Nouveau (which is of course highly appropriate given the publication date of the original book). In the modern version, Chrysis is regularly depicted in intimate scenes alone, with her maid Djala or with the two girls Rhodis and Myrtocleia. With their tousled hair, pouting lips and pneumatic breasts, these women are very much the late twentieth century ideal. Most of the time, they are presented as being more interested in each other than in any of the male characters in the story, but my response is that there are really rather high-quality examples of fairly standard pornographic obsessions. When we look at them, it’s worth recalling Pierre Louys’ own description of his heroine, when he wrote to the painter Albert Besnard asking to paint her:

“Chrysis, as womanly as possible- tall, not skinny, a very ‘beautiful girl.’ Nothing vague or elusive in the forms. All parts of her body have their own expression, apart from their participation in the beauty of the whole. Hair golden brown, almost Venetian; very lively and eventful, not at all like a river. Of primary importance in the type of Chrysis, the mouth having all the appetites, thick and moist- but interesting […] Painted lips, nipples and nails. Depilated armpits. Twenty years old; but twenty years in Africa.”

Aphrodite, chapter 1, Milo Manara, 1999

Bess, plate for Aphrodite, 1999, Book 2, c.1, ‘The Garden of the Goddess’

A fascinating contrast to the the first two volumes of the 1999 edition is to be found in the third, illustrated by Claire Wendling (born 1967). She is a French author of comic books and her response to the text is interesting because it is so much darker and less obviously ‘sexy’ than that of her male collaborators. The plates are, literally, dark in tone and, although they tend to focus on solo female nudes, rather than lascivious eroticism is there is a mood of mental and physical suffering entirely appropriate to the final section of the book, in which Chrysis is arrested, sentenced to death, executed and buried. Her cover image evokes- for me- thoughts of Gustav Klimt in its decoration, but the twisted, crouched posture of the woman doesn’t look seductive- rather she’s supplicatory or, possibly, predatory.

At the start of this post I proposed that the book illustrations published with successive editions of the works of Pierre Louys can be a record of changes in society- in attitudes to sexuality, gender and the status and rights of women. I think that this is true, but that the evidence does not necessarily reveal huge steps forward in those areas. Far more women are involved now in commercial art, and the works of Louys provide vehicles for the expression of lesbian desire on their own terms: albeit in the service of illustrating books written by a man in which his sympathetic views of same-sex attraction compete with heterosexual masculine eroticism. Art styles have evolved, but the attitudes expressed by what’s depicted have not necessarily developed at the same pace.

Violence, Fear & Horror: ‘Sanguines’ by Pierre Louys

One of the less well-known books by French author Pierre Louys is his collection of stories entitled Sanguines, first published in 1903. The American poet, translator and classical scholar, Mitchell S. Buck, who edited the Collected Works of Pierre Louys in 1926, described Sanguines as a series of “pastels” (he used the same term in his own volume of prose poems, Syrinx: Pastels of Hellas, in 1914). By ‘pastels’ I take Buck to have meant that the various brief stories were simply broad sketches of situations, as against detailed studies. In French, sanguine has the meaning of red chalk, or a drawing in that medium, so that Buck’s ‘pastels’ is in effect a direct translation of the title.

Sanguines includes two stories set in classical Greece which are, as such, successors to Bilitis and Aphrodite. The first is The Wearer of Purple (L’Homme de poupre), the story of the artist Parrhasius, who tortures a model to death for the sake of authenticity, as I’ve discussed before. The second is Dialogue au soleil couchant (Dialogue at Sunset), a romantic exchange between the young shepherd Arcas and a girl called Melitta. It takes the form of a prose poem, and as such resembles (in form) one of Louys’ very earliest long works, Farm Girls (although the latter is a highly explicit erotic fantasy). The book also contains a variety of tales set in the modern day. A New Sensation, (Une volupté nouvelle) however, bridges ancient and modern settings by bringing the nymph Callisto from ancient times into contemporary France, where she turns up suddenly at the door of a man’s apartment, only to discover that little has changed over a few thousand years- although she is impressed by cigarettes. The Ascent of the Venusberg, which I have also described separately, might be classified in the same category, in that it involves contact with the goddess Aphrodite/ Venus in Germany of the early twentieth century.

However, the other stories in Sanguines which have a contemporary setting are predominantly concerned with sexual violence, or the threat of it. These include A Landing from the Roadstead at Nemours (set in Morocco, a jealous husband murders his wife and her lover when he discovers them in bed together), The Venetian Blind (a girl witnesses an attempted rape at knife point outside her bedroom window; the victim stabs her attacker), and The Strange Adventure of Madame Esquollier (a mother and her daughter are abducted as they leave the opera and are taken to a remote house. There they are stripped to their underclothes; they anticipate rape and murder, but in fact the whole purpose is for a couturier to measure their dresses so that he can copy their fine tailoring…)

There is also a thread of surrealism or fantasy in several of the stories in the collection. Une volupté nouvelle, as we’ve seen, involves the time-travel of Callisto to Paris in the 1900s. In The Impersonation of Esther, the female philosopher Esther Gobseck discovers that her name has been used by Honoré Balzac as the name of the prostitute heroine of his book, the Highs and Lows of a Harlot (Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, 1847). She travels to Paris to confront him over this, but he- bizarrely- firstly accuses her of imitating his character and then concludes that she must be his fictional Esther brought to life. Accepting this, the real Esther then attempts to adopt the personality and lifestyle of her imaginary namesake. In The In-Plano, a little girl creeps into her father’s library whilst her parents are out, opens one of his books and is terrified when one of the illustrations comes to life. Lastly, we should note the story Spring Night, published by Louys in 1906 but incorporated by Mitchell Buck with Twilight of the Nymphs in the 1926 edition of the Collected Works. A woman in ancient Egypt is awaiting the arrival of her secret lover; instead, a century-old mummy enters her room and tries to molest her. She ‘murders’ the desiccated body with her long hair pins. These horrific and fantastical tales have a lot in common with the stories of Edgar Alan Poe (with which Louys was doubtless familiar) and with the work of H. P. Lovecraft, who was himself inspired by Poe.

Callisto on Calbet’s cover

Sanguines was also published under the title Contes Choisis (Selected Stories) in 1911, 1919 and 1933. In this form, the book contains more stories- those mentioned above plus La Désespérée (the story of an elopement), Le Capitaine aux guides (a woman confesses an infidelity to her doctor) and Un cas juridique sans précédent (a tale involving the marriage of one of Siamese twins). The first edition was illustrated by Antoine Calbet, whose etchings are really rather dull. The 1919 edition was illustrated by Gabriel Daragnès and the third version by Jean Lebedeff and matches other books by Louys that were issued by the same publisher, Fayard. Lebedeff also illustrated Bilitis in 1933 and, I think, reused quite a few of the woodcut blocks three years later.

Daragnes’ lively title page

Various illustrated editions of this collection have appeared. In 1932 Quentin Bell provided a cover design for what seems to be the first of these- the text was put into English by James Cleugh and the Willy-Nilly Press issued it. Strictly speaking, this book was the first English rendering of the book as a separate volume: Cleugh’s translation of Sanguines had already been included in the US edition of the Collected Works of Pierre Louys, published in 1926 by the Pierre Louys Society and edited by Buck. This volume also includes translations of Aphrodite, Bilitis, King Pausole, Woman and Puppet, Twilight of the Nymphs and Psyche and is illustrated with black and white woodcuts by Harry G. Spanner). For Sanguines, Spanner only provided two illustrations, a full-page plate showing the moment in Roadstead at Nemours that the lovers are discovered by the husband, and a small headpiece for The Wearer of Purple. This deserves a brief comment: the story first appeared in 1901 in an edition illustrated by F Schmidt. For his frontispiece, Schmidt chose to depict the artist Parrhasius with his two young slaves; Spanner did the same, although I feel his rendition better captures the wealthy arrogance of the man.

Schmidt, 1901

H G Spanner, 1926

Maritte Lydis, illustration of Callisto for Une volupté nouvelle (A New Sensation)

Mariette Lydis followed up with another version in 1934, one of several books by Louys that she illustrated that year for Union Latine d’Editions. Her focus, as ever, was on the naked female; her Callisto is as statuesque and placid as ever, although you’ll notice she is smoking a cigarette.

Lobel Riche, Madame Esquollier & daughter fear the worst

There was then a publishing lull until after the Second World war. However, as soon as 1945, an edition illustrated by Almery Lobel Riche appeared. He supplied twenty dry points, seeming especially intrigued by the story of Madame Esquollier. Delightfully, as well, you’ll see that one of these illustrations was- in fact- a sanguine sketched in red chalk.

Lobel Riche, Madame Esquollier & daughter learn the truth

Lobel Riche, Callisto is unimpressed

In 1961 two further editions came out- one illustrated by Gilles Saint-Mery and the other by Raymond Brenot. I’ve been so far unable to find images of Saint-Mery’s illustrations; Brenot’s plates, meanwhile, are very much of their period.

Callisto from A New Sensation

Esther Gobseck

Melitta & Arcas in Dialogue at Sunset

Living in the past?- shaping a classical future in writings of Pierre Louys

Henri Gerbault, Jeunes Trottins

In several previous posts I have talked about what’s been labelled the ‘Romantic‘ view of childhood by art and cultural historians. My feeling is that the French author Pierre Louys cannot be said to have been in sympathy with that- in part because he was not in sympathy with many of the wider themes in Romanticism either, such as the key idea of the relationship between humans and the natural world. He would not have sympathised either with their rejection of classicism nor with the notion of artistic creation ‘ex nihilo‘ without the example of previous works. Citation, imitation and- even- parody of earlier literature were a very important aspect of Louys’ writing technique, as I’ve described before. I’ll say more about his relationship to the classical past shortly, but so far as youth and growing up were concerned, I feel he was probably unconvinced by the Romantic notion of a separate state of childhood- and this because the world he depicted in his work was a harshly practical one. Those works of Louys that were set in contemporary France- mainly his poetry- describe a tough world in which livings had to be earned from an early age. His verse is populated with actresses, dancers, apprentices and the so-called trottins (trotters)- errand girls who worked for seamstresses and milliners. These girls worked hard, long hours to scrape an income together and the poet represented their lives honestly and unromantically. His classical world, especially the story Aphrodite, reflects the same economic exigencies, with its peripatetic entertainers and temple courtesans.

Pierre Louys was not, it seems to me, a man at home in the modern world of late nineteenth and early twentieth century France. His first two novels, Aphrodite and Les Chansons de Bilitis, of course were recreations of a classical Hellenic past that may never have existed, and much of his subsequent work similarly sought to remove itself from the contemporary world: The Twilight of the Nymphs and numerous of his other short stories chose classical and Egyptian settings (The Wearer of Purple and Dialogue at Sunset in Sanguines are examples and in A New Sensation, Callisto actually intrudes into a modern Parisian apartment). His major novel Les Aventures du Roi Pausole (1900) is set in a pagan land that borders modern France but shares none of its customs or morality; what’s more, the book is one of Louys’ most ostentatiously literary works, being replete with epigraphs drawn principally from French authors of the seventeenth century and earlier- as well as from classical writers- and many of the story’s names and ideas are classically derived. The unpublished novels L’Histoire du Roi Gonzalve and L’Ile aux dames are both set in imaginary lands; Gonzalve may ostensibly be Christian, but none of his behaviour is, whilst his utopian Ile aux dames (like Pausole’s realm of Trypheme) exists outside familiar moral codes.

As for Louys himself, after about 1910 he retreated more and more from publishing and engagement with social life, becoming an almost total recluse behind drawn curtains in his last years. The horrors of the Great War might well have accelerated this withdrawal from a monstrous contemporary reality. 

Trottins in the street

Louys created for himself worlds in which the rules for conduct imposed upon him by religion and state simply didn’t apply. He proposed societies in sexualities were entirely liberated, so that preferences such same-sex attractions or incest were unremarkable and entirely acceptable- just as in Greek myth they were addressed dispassionately and unremarkably. I feel sure, as well, that Louys drew upon the philosophical arguments of the Marqus de Sade in doing this. In Philosophy dans le Boudoir and his many other works (such as Justine and Juliette), de Sade appealed to ‘Nature’ as the source of right behaviour and the measure of what was good. He contended that, if Nature had created the desire and ability to enjoy a certain pleasure, it could not therefore be wrong or unnatural. This argument, flawed as it frequently was, justified for the Marquis almost any sexual preference and nearly all forms of conduct. Louys did not pursue de Sade to the extremes to which his reasoning led- that only one’s personal pleasure counted and that anything done in pursuit of it was justified. Equally, rather than being guided by a self-defined notion of ‘Nature,’ Louys preferred to rely upon a reconstruction of ancient Greek paganism, but within this framework, he could endorse a considerable degree of liberalism- and even libertinism. Another major difference between Louys and de Sade is that the former shared none of the political interests of the Marquis. De Sade was a passionate pacifist and played a role in the French Revolution: Louys was very much a product of aestheticism and decadence. His focus was physical sensation alone so that, whilst he shared certain sensual tastes with de Sade, Pierre Louys restricted himself to these. I have described his utopias before; what is notable about them is the fact that all we learn of their laws and customs is concerned with personal relationships. Louys was almost entirely uninterested in looking beyond these subjects to broader social structures or issues of power and control.

Steinlen, Les deux trottins, 1902

The freedom and self-expression that Louys described and championed can seem far ahead of its time (although arguably it’s achieved by looking backwards into a past that, as I’ve said, may never have existed). Quite often, the results can seem refreshingly free of guilt and repression; sometimes, however, they can verge on the unpleasant extremities to which de Sade tended. King Gonzalve’s uninhibited indulgence of malign plans for his twelve daughters is not only monotonous but calculating, callous and repellent. He is a character with whom it’s virtually impossible to sympathise or identify and, whilst it may be possible to regard the princesses as liberated, they might might more properly be viewed as abused and depraved by an exploitative upbringing. Certainly, Louys has the situation backfire upon the self-centred monarch, a circumstance which can scarcely be regarded as endorsement of his conduct.

Arguably, Louys created a fantasy world in his fiction in which his personal obsessions could be acted out. Because those tastes and inclinations often clashed with the prevailing ideas of the society in which he lived, he chose to imagine societies in which the preconceptions and judgments he disliked had no place; he rejected not just certain moral presumptions but the entire philosophical and theological framework that supported them. In essence (just like de Sade) Louys appear to have felt that whatever gave pleasure was, by definition, good and permissible. Beyond that, all rules and limits were to him artificial.

Pierre Bonnard, Trottins, 1927

I think that all the indications of his writing are that Louys felt little sympathy for the mores of his era and consciously adopted a ‘pre-modern’ view of society. Instead, the writer chose a classical, pagan past as the forum for his imaginings for a variety of reasons. There were various existing precedents for doing so. One was the neo-classical revival in art that had occurred in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Artists such as Lord Leighton, Lorenz Alma-Tadema and Sir Edward Poynter recreated the Greek and Roman worlds on canvas, using them as settings within which contemporary problems might be addressed examined obliquely. Secondly, as Louys knew very well, many of the ideas and attitudes that he espoused found expression- if not support- in ancient texts. There were clearly erotic sources, such as the Satyricon, but scattered across numerous authors and forms (plays, epigrams, poems) there were multiple other source materials that could be mined. An example occurs in Les Chansons de Bilitis in which Louys elaborated upon a slight remark by Dionysius the Sophist. He had composed a short verse “Little vendor of roses, you are as fair as your flowers. But what are you selling- yourself, or your roses, or both?” Song 129 of Bilitis developed this brief scene: the girl and her sister are asked the question by a group of young men. Just like the Parisian trottins mentioned earlier, the girls need to earn an income to avoid a beating from their mother, so they go with the men. The woman describing this incident tells Bilitis that the sisters “didn’t even know how to smile.” What I understand her to say here is that they had not yet learned to feign delight and passion with every customer, regardless of their own wishes and feelings. This was Louys’ primary judgment on the scenario. What is striking for me is how he drew frequently upon his comprehensive knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics to find a text to spoke to contemporary concerns as he saw them in the world around him. This could provide a distance to discuss current problems whilst still remaining connected and engaged.

In the imaginary worlds of Pierre Louys, brought to life time after time in his poetry and prose, matters of gender, generation or consanguinity were treated as being of little consequence; rather he envisaged a continuum of experiences in which financial necessity contended with personal circumstances, societal expectations and church (and state) rules that seemed detached from the realities of many lives. For more detail on the writing of Louys and for further commentary upon this, see my separate pages. A full, annotated version of this essay can be downloaded from my Academia page.

A trottin making deliveries for a milliner

Diana & Callisto- the goddess and her nymph lover

Frans Hals, Jupiter Sees Callisto

As I mentioned in a posting on the painter Henry Draper, one myth that has had an abiding attraction for many artists (for fairly obvious reasons) is that of Jupiter and Callisto.

Jupiter/ Zeus was a typical Olympian god, in that he couldn’t keep his thunderbolt in his toga, and when he spotted the nymph Callisto one day, he determined to have her. As Frans Hals pictured her (see above), she was clearly a highly desirable young woman but as one of the followers of Diana/ Artemis, she had sworn an oath of virginity and was strictly out of bounds. This didn’t dissuade the god, though; he simply took the form of her mistress and seduced her that way. This scenario has provided plenty of titillating material for painters since the Renaissance, and it’s interesting to see how different artists have handled the seduction.

after Caspar Netscher (1613)

Karoly Marko

A few painters, such Netscher and Marko, have painted the nymph as surprised or reluctant at the goddess’ entreaties. This may seem surprising: Diana had a reputation for taking girls as lovers- her other conquests included the goddess Britomaris, the princesses Cyrene, Anticleia and Atalanta and the nymphs Daphne, Amethystos and Taygete. There are said to have been gay and lesbian cults linked to the worship of her in her forms as Artemis Orthia, and Artemis Pergaea. On this basis, the hesitant or shrinking vision of Callisto seems surprising; in choosing to become one of Diana’s gang she had, consciously, chosen (to paraphrase Village People) to “hang out with all the girls.” The suspicion or reluctance may be more a matter of the sudden and urgent nature of Diana’s demands, which seemed uncharacteristic. In this, Callisto was, of course, perfectly right, as it was Zeus pressurising her into quick sex.

Peter Paul Rubens, 1613

Jean-Simone Berthelemy, 1743

Fragonard

Berthelemy’s Callisto seems simply meek and shy, though, rather than unwilling- as does Fragonard’s. The nymph in this version is distinctly younger than Diana, and she seems flattered, awed and overwhelmed by the goddess’ attention rather than being dismayed.

The anonymous French version of the scene from the eighteenth century, that is shown below, combines a physically insistent Diana with a slightly doubtful Callisto; the sight of the nearby eagle (symbol of Zeus) makes her begin to suspect that the woman caressing her so persistently isn’t all she seems. Berthe Morisot’s impressionist version of the seduction seems to capture the same moment; something has caught Callisto’s attention, despite Diana’s passionate embrace.

Anon, French, 18th century

Berthe Morisot

Other versions of the seduction are quite happy to present it at face value; they accept the lesbian nature of Diana and her retinue and simply concentrate on the two lovers’ interaction, without any subtext or distraction from the central story of a blossoming love. In Jacopo Amigoni’s rendition, Callisto is already perched on Diana’s lap, her arm around the goddess’ shoulders in easy familiarity. Likewise, a canvas produced by the workshop or circle of Antonis van Dyck shows the two women reaching out to each other whilst they gaze into each other’s eyes. Diana’s confident hand on the nymph’s thigh indicates that this is merely the culmination of an attraction that had already existed. The importuning Olympian god is quite forgotten in these images- they are concerned solely with the two women and their mutual affection and passion.

Jacopo Amigoni

from the school of Antonis van Dyck

Francois Boucher painted the pair several times; in the version below Diana is removing her lover’s clothes, but the nymph’s protesting hand fails to resist as their eyes meet. Zeus’ eagle is in the background, but it is the intervention of Cupid with his darts and torch that is more significant: the couple are falling in love- or are realising that they have already been in love for some time. As is typical of Boucher’s work, the females are depicted as rosy cheeked and chubby- in their teens perhaps- and nearly as plump, pink and beguiling as the tumble of cupids behind them.

Francois Boucher

Federico Cervelli

In Cervelli’s scene, Callisto very plainly welcomes Diana’s approaches, which are notably tender and erotic. There is also visible love shown in the second of Boucher’s canvases, where the couple are so rapt with each other that the four gambolling cupids in the tree above don’t manage to distract them at all. Gerrit van Honthorst’s depiction of the goddess and nymph is a truly beautiful moment of consummated love. It is sensitive, a masterwork and, of course, truly radical for its early seventeenth century date. In fact, even today, it might be hard to identify a painting to equal it.

Francois Boucher

Gerrit van Honthorst

Jean Baptiste Marie Pierre, 1745

French painter Pierre, meanwhile, went for a moment slightly later in the incident as passion starts to seize the couple. Callisto by no means need be seen as a passive victim of seduction- she can be as keen as the goddess, as in Spierincks’ depiction as well.

Karel Philips Spierincks

The upshot of the seduction by Zeus is tragedy, however. Diana’s entourage are sworn to virginity, which we may understand as meaning that they have forsworn sex with men. For example, in Pierre Louys’ Songs of Bilitis, a friend visits Bilitis and Mnasidika asking to borrow an olisbos (a leather dildo) before she visits her own girlfriend, Myrrhina (it seems the visitor does not wish to purchase one of her own in case her husband finds out). The exchange with Bilitis is as follows: “What do you wish of me? – That you lend me… – Speak. – I dare not name the object. – We have none. – Truly? – Mnasidika is a virgin…” (Bilitis, Part 2, ‘The Object’). William-Alphonse Bouguereau‘s 1878 Nymphaeum may capture some of the mood of this sapphic sodality, although Julius Leblanc Stewart’s ‘Hunting Nymphs’ may better portray the more active and independent nature of Diana’s troop.

Bouguereau, Nymphaeum

Julius Leblanc Stewart, Nymphes Chasseresses, 1898

In having sex with Zeus, Callisto breached the injunction of her mistress and the spirit of her sisterhood. In Callisto’s case, not only had she coupled with a man, she became pregnant. Even though her contact with Zeus was unwitting, she was banished from Diana’s court when her condition was (inevitably) revealed. This is a very harsh judgment, but anyone familiar with the justice of the Greek myths will know that the treatment of offenders was frequently excessive. For more on nymphs, see my dedicated Nymphology blog.

Mermaids, nymphs & goddesses- the art of Herbert James Draper

Lament for Icarus, 1898

Herbert James Draper (1863-1920) was an British Classicist painter. He was born to a Tottenham jeweller, but after attending the Bruce Castle School in White Hart Lane, he went on to study art at the Royal Academy. Art historian Christopher Wood has remarked how Draper’s styled was “compounded out of the classicism of Leighton and the aestheticism of Burne-Jones.” He was one of the very best painters of his period, but is now scandalously and quite inexplicably neglected.

Sea Melodies

During the 1890s, Draper worked as an illustrator, but from 1894 he began to focus on paintings of mythological themes from ancient Greece. In later years, as the public’s tastes changed and such fantasy scenes fell from fashion, he concentrated more on portraits. Even so, during his later, his popularity declined and he continues to remain largely forgotten, despite his great talent, whilst his contemporary John Waterhouse, who was so close in style, is still very well known.

A Water Baby

Draper is included here because of his commitment to the depiction of mythology. His ambitious canvases are alive with nymphs and goddesses, mermaids and kelpies. Art historian Christopher Wood rightly said that his water creatures can be “as entrancing as any of Waterhouse’s.”

Ulysses & the Sirens, 1909

The Kelpie, 1903

Draper’s work bears ready comparison to that of his contemporary J W Waterhouse. They tackled very similar subjects and they both developed an instantly recognisable style, particularly in their use of the same young model, who’s often replicated in different poses within the same painting. Perhaps, of course, they are too pretty- disguising the very real peril that lurks beneath the surface in all these water creatures- but his paintings are technically masterful and visually gorgeous.

Halcyone, 1913

The Sea Maiden

Draper’s style is confident, colourful and extremely accomplished. His figure work is excellent and the light in his pictures can be exquisite, especially the sunset catching the hair in Icarus. These skills combined to make his mythological scenes just as fresh and real as his modern day subjects.

The Vintage Morn

A Young Girl By a Pool

I have encountered Draper’s paintings before in my work on British folklore (the kelpie and mermaids), as well as during the preparation of my recent book on the goddess Aphrodite, whose image concludes this survey. The Pearls of Aphrodite is a fine example of Draper’s work; his painting of seascapes was very skilled and his bevy of adoring nymphs are lovely. The picture underlines, too, the marine aspect of the goddess that we may tend to forget today. She was- as is still well-known- born of the waves off the island of Cyprus and, for the ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, she retained this intimate association with the sea and with ships. Aphrodite was the goddess who brought vessels and their crews safely home to harbour, and she went by many names in antiquity that stressed her links to calm seas and smooth sailing.

The Pearls of Aphrodite

Draper depicts Aphrodite with an entourage of nubile attendants. In truth, this is not a facet of the goddess much attested by the surviving myths. She tends to be seen as an independent spirit, and her primary relationships are with males- divine or mortal- whom she chooses to pursue and couple with. Other Olympian figures, such as Hera and Diana, more typically have their female followers; indeed, in the story of the nymph Callisto, Zeus takes the shape of Diana in order to seduce the nymph who has taken his fancy- very much implying that Diana was in the habit of taking lovers from her entourage. Diana is said to have had a number of female partners, divine and mortal, and it’s argued that the oath of ‘virginity’ taken by her companions was not an abstinence from sex but simply from sex with men. Certainly, those men who stumbled upon the goddess and her court when bathing all met grisly ends.

Francois Boucher, Callisto Seduced by Jupiter in the Guise of Diana, 1759

There are no clear records of Aphrodite having female as well as male partners, but given the gender fluidity that’s definitely associated with her cult, this would not be surprising. Probably author Pierre Louys compounded this with stories of Diana to found the episode in his Aphrodite in which the two flute players and dancing girls, Rhodis and Myrtocleia, seek the goddess’ blessing for their partnership, asking “if it be true that the tender Adonis is not alone sufficient for you and that sometimes your sleep is retarded by a yet sweeter embrace?” We might at least suggest that Aphrodite was not indifferent to same sex love: Francois Boucher (amongst many other artists) painted several versions of the seduction of Callisto and, as we can see above, he always included Cupid, casting his bolt and actively bringing the lovers together.

Suggested further reading includes Christopher Wood’s Olympian Dreamers and William Gaunt’s Victorian Olympus. For more information on Victorian art, see details of my book Cherry Ripe on my publications page.