![]() ![]() ![]() Franz von Stuck (1863–1928), The Three Goddesses Athena, Hera and Aphrodite (1923), oil on panel, 73.5 × 74 cm, Private collection. This is the basis of the English phrase a Sisyphean task, which is endless and futile. As punishment for these crimes, he was condemned to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill, as shown in this painting. Sisyphus was the founder king of Ephyra, who was greedy, cheated, and violated his moral obligations to guests and travellers by killing them. Another simple, bold, and powerful image, it may have been inspired by Titian’s famous painting of the ancient Greek mythical king. ![]() Sisyphus (1920) may have expressed von Stuck’s increasingly difficult task of attracting attention to his art, and perhaps resulting self-criticism. Unfortunately, after the War, interest in von Stuck’s art declined quite quickly, as Europe was swept by the new modernists. She grasps the faun’s horns and laughs with joy as the faun gives her a piggy-back out of the sea. His mermaid is a maritime equivalent of a faun, with separate scaly legs rather than the more conventional single fish tail. This has survived in two very similar versions, the other of which is now in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Wikimedia Commons.Īs the war was ending, von Stuck returned to his favourite faun motif, in A Faun and a Mermaid (1918). Franz von Stuck (1863–1928), A Faun and a Mermaid (1918), oil on canvas, 156.7 × 61.5 cm, Private collection (also a copy in Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany). Von Stuck took a symbolist approach, simplifying his subject to that of the hero swinging his sword at the multiple heads of the Hydra – a powerful image indeed. Enlisting the assistance of his friend Iolaus to cauterise the severed heads with fire, Hercules managed to remove the one immortal head using a golden sword provided by the goddess Athena, and that killed it. However, for each head that he removed, two grew back. He covered his face with a cloth to protect from the Hydra’s deadly fumes, and tried cutting its heads off. Living on the Lernean marshes near Argos, for the second of his twelve labours Hercules was charged with killing it. The Hydra was a poisonous monster with multiple serpent-like heads on the body of a dog, which could kill with its breath alone. This had been depicted by Gustave Moreau in his painting of the same name in 1876, which von Stuck may well have seen. Hercules and the Lernean Hydra (1915) is von Stuck’s account of the encounter between Hercules (Heracles) and the monstrous Hydra during the second of his labours. Image by Yelkrokoyade, via Wikimedia Commons. Franz von Stuck (1863–1928), Hercules and the Lernean Hydra (1915), media and dimensions not known, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany. Unfortunately the limited biographical information that I have doesn’t reveal whether he may have holidayed on the Mediterranean, perhaps, which would seem the most likely setting here. Munich may be almost as far from the sea as you can get in Europe, but the artist painted several of these mythical scenes at the seaside. Von Stuck continued to delight in exploring the mythical life of fauns, and in particular their playing reed pipes, in A Faun Blowing Reed-Pipes (1914). Franz von Stuck (1863–1928), A Faun Blowing Reed-Pipes (1914), media and dimensions not known, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany. Thankfully, he continued to paint innovative and exciting narrative paintings. One of its features, a dedicated floor for sculture, was never used for that purpose, because on the outbreak of war he ceased making sculpture. ![]() By the start of the First World War, Franz von Stuck was successful, ennobled, and had just had a new studio built at his Villa Stuck in Munich. ![]()
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