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| Ancient Rome Hercules and Cerberus 1st century BC - 1st century AD chalcedony cameo Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Agostino Veneziano Orpheus with Cerberus 1528 engraving British Museum |
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| Jan Harmensz Muller Pluto with Cerberus ca. 1590-95 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Anonymous Italian Sculptor after a drawing by Rosso Fiorentino Pluto and Cerberus ca. 1600-1620 bronze Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Peter Paul Rubens and workshop Hercules and Cerberus 1636-37 oil on panel (cartoon) Museo del Prado, Madrid |
from L'Allegro
Hence loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy;
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,
As ragged as thy locks
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
– John Milton (1645)
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| Carlo Cesio after Pietro da Cortona Cerberus (at left) - Aeneas with the Cumaean Sibyl (at right) (copy of ceiling fresco - Palazzo del Principe Panfilio, Rome) ca. 1661 engraving British Museum |
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| Anonymous Swiss Maker Orpheus and Eurydice in the Underworld with Persephone, Pluto and Cerberus ca. 1790 enamel painting mounted on gold snuffbox Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Alessandro Masnago Apollo slaying Python ca. 1575-1600 agate cameo Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Pietro Francavilla Apollo victorious over Python 1591 marble Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Ferdinando Tacca Apollo slaying Python ca. 1640-80 bronze Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Marcantonio Franceschini Apollo and Diana slaying Python ca. 1692-1709 oil on canvas Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Georg Raphael Donner Apollo slaying Python before 1741 bronze relief Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Joseph Mallord William Turner Apollo and Python ca. 1811 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Eugène Delacroix Apollo slaying Python 1850-51 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
from Paradise Lost
So having said, a while he stood, expecting
Thir universal shout and high applause
To fill his eare, when contrary he hears
On all sides, from innumerable tongues
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn; he wondered, but not long
Had leasure, wondring at himself now more;
His Visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,
His Armes clung to his Ribs, his Leggs entwining
Each other, till supplanted down he fell
A monstrous Serpent on his Belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vaine, a greater power
Now rul'd him, punisht in the shape he sin'd,
According to his doom: he would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue
To forked tongue, for now were all transform'd
Alike, to Serpents all as accessories
To his bold Riot: dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the Hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters head and taile,
Scorpion and Asp, and Amphisbaena dire,
Cerastes hornd, Hydrus, and Ellops drear,
And Dipsas (not so thick swarm'd once the Soil
Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the Isle
Ophiusa) but still greatest hee the midst,
Now Dragon grown, larger then whom the Sun
Ingenderd in the Pythian Vale on slime,
Huge Python, and his Power no less he seem'd
Above the rest still to retain; they all
Him follow'd issuing forth to th' open Field,
Where all yet left of that revolted Rout
Heav'n-fall'n, in station stood or just array,
Sublime with expectation when to see
In Triumph issuing forth their glorious Chief;
They saw, but other sight instead, a crowd
Of ugly Serpents; horror on them fell,
And horrid sympathie; for what they saw,
They felt themselvs now changing; down thir arms,
Down fell both Spear and Shield, down they as fast,
And the dire hiss renew'd, and the dire form
Catcht by Contagion, like in punishment,
As in their crime. Thus was th' applause they meant,
Turnd to exploding hiss, triumph to shame
Cast on themselves from thir own mouths.
– John Milton (1674)