Hey dear Hiveans, first of all I would like to welcome you all to my new post and hope you are well and your day was full of positive experiences! In this post, I would like to talk a little about mythology and art and hope you are able to expand your knowledge.
Here you can see a artwork made by the artist Leo von König (1871 - 1944) and the artist used oil for these painting and worked with a high degree of detail. His work artistically expresses Greek mythology and to see is the Princess Europa with the bull and what this figure had to do with mythology I would like to explain in more detail in this article. Europa is considered the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor who is also known as the son of the god of the seas Poseidon as well as Libya and she is also often regarded as a personification of the continent Europe and in the visual arts she is often depicted together with a bull and the most famous legends of her can be traced back to the Greek author Homer who had mentioned her in his work Ilias. Ovid also wrote about Europa in his work Metamorphoses and the poets Herodotus and Moschos also mentioned her and in the legends in which she appears there are different interpretations or versions. The best-known legend why she depicted with a bull in art is probably associated with the most famous of the gods Zeus who had once heared about her beauty and had fallen in love with her, but he did not know how to approach her to take her as a wife. Zeus heard that Europa was very fond of animals and often observed animals near her palace and this brought Zeus to the idea of turning into a bull in order to be able to approach her undisturbed and this is not the first time where he used his abilities to turn into animals and he once fell in love with Leda and decided to turn into a swan to approach her. Back to the legend about Europa, after Zeus had turned into a bull, he approached her who was probably playing with her friends on the beach of Tyros and this scene can probably also be seen in this work of art and it didn't take long for Europa to see the magnificent white bull and approached it.
She was not afraid of him and decided to caress him and even sit on his back and he immediately recognized his possibility that she was so close to him and he threw himself into the sea together with her and swam away. Europa then broke out in panic and her friends tried to swim after the two and the mood of Europa quickly calmed down and with her on his back, the bull swam to the island Crete and wanted to confess his love here after he had turned back into his actual shape. When they reached Crete, Zeus transformed back and probably she immediately fell in love with him and decided to stay with him and give birth to some children with him, but there are different versions of this legend and it is also sometimes said that Zeus has left the island again. Before he did that, he appointed her to the Queen of Crete and Zeus also went to the god of fire and blacksmithing Hephaestus and asked for armor which should protect Europa on the island and he then built a giant of metal that had supernatural abilities and should protect her and he called the giant Talos. Talos was stationed on the coast of Crete and threw every ship or enemy that approached with stones and as you imagine a giant, you can imagine what happens when you were hit by one of his stones and so Europa was well protected. In some legends, her father also searched for her and sent some troops from Phoenicia to look for her and the continent to which Zeus had brought her should also be named in her honor and according to Greek mythology, this is also the beginning of the European continent. At the end of the article, I would like to present pictures of a sculpture depicting the well-known author Homer, who had probably handed down the first legends about Europe.
Thank you very much for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about this topic! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!
