Medea, Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919)
In Greek mythology, there is a thrilling "marital" war favored by Western artists:
Wife Medea: Beautiful princess and witch, husband Iasson: hero and prince who captured the Golden Fleece.
The two sons look like gods and goddesses – in the first ten years of their marriage, they loved each other to death.
But in the bones of this beautiful love, it is soaked with extreme bloody violence: blood wedding, dismemberment, brother killing, killing children, poisoning, betrayal, abandoning wives and children, which can be described as heavy elements.
And the cause of the tragedy, in the final analysis, is because of a little "misalignment": Medea's love is as fierce as fire, and Iason has long seen people's hearts.
In view of the richness of this story and the fact that similar plots have been staged repeatedly in the human world, many classic paintings with the theme of Medea's story have been born in Europe.
Let's look at the painting and tell the story.
Medea was originally a princess of a country, beautiful as a flower, but not without the power of a chicken: as a descendant of the sun god, she is also a witch who wields the power of magic.
But love always makes people - under the bow and arrow of Cupid, the god of love, she falls in love with the alien prince Iasson who has come from afar.
Blinded by the extreme heat of love, she helps Iasson to seize the Golden Fleece from her father's hand and demands that the two marry on this condition.
There is no doubt that Medea is the overly active side, and Iasson has no counter-bargain for practical interests – which undoubtedly lays the groundwork for what happened later.
In order to recover Medea, who had eloped, and also to preserve the golden fleece of her own country in the oracle, her king father sent her brother as a pursuer, after all, it was a matter of the future of the country, and the matter was big, but it was not thought that in order to delay time, Medea actually killed her brother with her own hands, and cut his body, cut it into countless pieces and threw it on the mountain, leaving her father and his men busy collecting the body.
The Golden Fleece by Herbert James Draper 1880 depicts the moment when Medea pushes her brother into the sea
After Iasson returned home, Medea used her wisdom and strength to kill her husband's usurped uncle and help Iason sit firmly on the throne.
But love has a shelf life in the end, and the strong side will always make the weak party feel stressed.
Not surprisingly, Iasson transferred his affection ten years later.
Medea's love is given by Cupid herself—her love is extreme, but it also translates into extreme hatred.
After many unsuccessful negotiations, on the wedding day, in the name of peace, she ordered her children to give Iason's bride with a beautiful costume with poison, and successively poisoned Iasson's new huan and the local king.
Subsequently, he personally killed his own and Iasson's two children, and has been out of the world ever since.
Iasson, on the other hand, died of depression after a battle with Medea.
Extreme love, extreme contradiction, extreme pain and struggle – the Medea in the 1868 painting of the former British Raphael painter Frederick Santis undoubtedly highlights this quality: in the picture, Medea recites a mantra, refines a potion in front of toads and stained blood, and smears it on a red necklace in order to poison the bride. Her expression was both sad and full of neuroticism before madness, and the hand holding the red silk rope was as entangled as the emotional story of the past.
This scene is also depicted by the pre-Raphaelite English painter Principe. His Medea is much more beautiful—though a red-clad, wild mushroom is being collected for a spell, two long snakes spiraling upwards and a dagger in his hand foreshadowing the tragedy that will follow—killing the king, killing the bride, killing the child. But Medea's face had only an irresolvable sadness.
The Killing of Medea, Delacroix 1838
Of course, the first two painters focused on the beauty of Medea as a beauty.
Then there are also other painters who depict her snake and scorpion side. Like Eugène Delacroix, the standard-bearer of French Romanticism, the one who painted Freedom Leads the French People, he was equally keen to depict the story of Medea. In 1838, he completed Medea's Killing of The Son, in which the artist selected a moment when a mother was about to kill her child: the story's anger, grief, and hatred simmered to a climax—but Medea's look was calm and sad, with only the shadow cast on her face and the dagger in her hand foreshadowing what happened next.
Of course, such "extreme emotions" are expressed in a "calm" way, which is part of the aesthetic ideas of classicism. In fact, not all killers are so calm. In the baroque period of the Italian famous female painter Artemisia pen, the killing of children is much more resolute and decisive, this painting was completed in 1620, the Medea in the painting is the fierceness of the hand, but the face reveals infinite sorrow - tiger poison after all, do not eat children, but the children are the crystallization of love, only by killing them, can the betrayed Iasson feel real pain.
Corrado Jagunto 1752
In addition to human nature, some artists are more concerned with Medea's dramatic encounter with Iasson after the killing of her son.
In 1673, the Dutch painter Henry Ferguson painted "Medea Casts a Spell while Destroying a Sculpture", which depicts Medea fleeing the scene in a chariot given by the sun god after killing her son.
Before fleeing, Medea actually summoned the chariot and the python to attack Iasson with skyfire.
Iazon swore an oath to love Medea forever, Jean-François de Troyes 1743
Who would have thought that they would be so glue-like? Just like this painting of Iason vowing to love Medea forever.
Finally, there is also a peaceful life. The former British Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse's Iason and Medea depicts Medea equipping Iason with a potion to complete the moment when he seized the Golden Fleece from his father's hand. The mood of the two sons is not high, but it shows a trace of solemnity and hesitation - Medea betrayed her father, and Iason's future is uncertain.
Iason and Medea, John William Waterhouse, 1907
Throughout the story, the love supremacist Medea and the supreme interest of Iasson, with love as the core, slaughtered many innocent relatives and mortals before and after, and when the tragedy occurred, Iasson faced Medea, the two only quarreled and blamed each other, neither self-reflection nor responsibility, like the marriage tragedy repeatedly staged in the world.
The selfish man Iason, who only cares about his own interests, draws water in a basket.
Blind to love, Medea cuts off all relationships with a butcher's knife and eventually leads to total destruction in pain.
But after all, people live in a network of interdependent relationships, and others are themselves.
It can be said that the love of Medea and Iasson is the most extreme love, and it also brings the most extreme consequences.
Alphonse Mucha's 1898 print Medea