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| Roman Empire Prometheus and Athena model the First Man ca. AD 180-190 marble sarcophagus relief Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Sèvres Manufactory Prometheus and the New Man ca. 1774-80 porcelain statuette Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
from The Metamorphoses
So Man came into the world. Maybe the great artificer
made him of seed divine in a plan for a better universe.
Maybe the earth that was freshly formed and newly divorced
from the heavenly ether retained some seeds of its kindred element –
earth, which Prometheus, the son of Iapetus, sprinkled with raindrops
and moulded into the likeness of gods who govern the universe.
Where other animals walk on all fours and look to the ground,
man was given a towering head and commanded to stand
erect, with his face uplifted to gaze on the stars of heaven.
Thus clay, so lately no more than a crude and formless substance,
was metamorphosed to assume the strange new figure of Man.
– Ovid (8 AD), translated by David Raeburn (2004)
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| Johannes Josephus Aarts Prometheus Defiant before 1934 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Paolo Farinati Minerva asleep and Prometheus with Stolen Fire ca. 1560-80 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Cossiers Prometheus stealing Fire 1636-37 oil on panel (cartoon) Museo del Prado, Madrid |
from Prometheus
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality
Seen in their sad reality
Were not as things that gods despise,
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense . . .
– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1816)
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| Dirck van Baburen Prometheus chained by Vulcan 1623 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Palma il Giovane Prometheus chained to the Caucasus ca. 1570-1608 oil on canvas Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Giovanni Bernardi after Michelangelo Prometheus and the Eagle before 1553 rock crystal intaglio British Museum |
from Prometheus Unbound
The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains
Eat with their burning cold into my bones.
Heaven's wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips
His beak in poison not his own, tears up
My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
The ghastly people of the realm of dreams,
Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
When the rocks split and close again behind:
While from their loud abysses howling throng
The genii of the storm, urging the rage
Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
– Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)
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| Palma il Giovane Prometheus and the Eagle before 1628 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Luca Cambiaso Prometheus before 1585 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Peter Paul Rubens Prometheus Bound ca. 1611-18 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Theodoor Rombouts Prometheus before 1637 oil on canvas Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp |
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| John Singer Sargent Prometheus ca. 1916-21 oil on canvas (study for mural at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) Harvard Art Museums |
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| Gioacchino Assereto Prometheus ca. 1620-49 oil on canvas Musée de la Chartreuse de Douai |
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| Henry Fuseli Prometheus rescued by Heracles before 1825 drawing British Museum |