Jason

JasonA black and white print of Bertel Thorvaldsen's Jason with the Golden Fleece the over life size marble of the Argonaut hero holding the fleece across his arm, his spear angled back over his shoulder. The composition is closely modelled on the Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) of Polykleitos; Thorvaldsen took the classical Greek canon as his direct template. The Jason was the work that made Thorvaldsen's career. He finished the full scale clay model in Rome in

sent on what is meant to be a fatal errand by a king who wants his mother

The mythological scene is the abduction of Proserpina (Persephone in Greek mythology) by Pluto

and it was painted endlessly from Roman Pompeii onward

the dolphin and the horse (which he either created or tamed

beautiful young man sits chained

The sculpture has a strange history

The pose here is not a static presentation but an instant of motion

His attributes are the thunderbolt

foliate ornament and the pretext for an elaborate mythological accessoires — and it entered the vocabulary of painters across Europe through the prints of the Bloemaert workshop and its contemporaries

Heracles and Perseus

He seizes the boy by the ankle and flings him over the cliffs

not the release of action