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| Bertoldo di Giovanni Bellerophon with Pegasus ca. 1481-82 bronze statuette Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Nicoletta da Modena Bellerophon with Pegasus ca. 1500-1510 engraving British Museum |
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| Jacopo de' Barbari Pegasus ca. 1509-1516 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Parmigianino Muse placing a Wreath on the Head of Pegasus before 1540 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Parmigianino Muse placing a Wreath on the Head of Pegasus before 1540 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
Peripheries
This circle holding the afternoon sky is a lake
For summer business measured in stacked pairs
Of peeling oars whose dinghies all ship water.
Beside it on the trampled grass a carousel shakes
And turns on an Old World instrument
The plink and plank and tinkle of a tune
Of plunging horses in fresh habiliment.
We catch the reins of enamel Pegasus
And lift the child until she is astride
A purple beast, where, wrapping infant arms
About his neck of wood, she whirls in space
And gallops off upon the turning wheel.
The horse climbs steadily the silver pole
Where cherubs hang, then slides toward spinning earth;
She sees the moving heaven of winged babes;
Rising to meet them, rising, she returns
To where our faces, staring in at hers,
Fixed, while her orbit whirls and sunlight burns,
Recede to artifact as her vision blurs.
– Ruth Stone (1959)
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| Angiolo Falconetto after Giulio Romano Apollo holding Pipes and accompanied by Pegasus ca. 1556-60 etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Paolo Farinati Perseus holding the Head of Medusa, with Pegasus before 1606 drawing Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Antonio Tempesta Perseus beheading Medusa, with Pegasus before 1620 etching Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
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| Peter Paul Rubens Perseus and Andromeda, with Pegasus ca. 1622 oil on panel, transferred to canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Nicolas Poussin Battle Scene with Sorcerer (from Orlando Furioso) ca. 1635-38 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| François Perrier Diana in her Chariot before 1650 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| attributed to Michel Corneille the Younger Pegasus tended by Nymphs before 1708 drawing Harvard Art Museums |
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| Odilon Redon Pegasus and Bellerophon ca. 1888 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Odilon Redon L'Aile 1893 lithograph British Museum |
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| John Singer Sargent Sketch for Perseus beheading Medusa, with Pegasus and Athena ca. 1922-24 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Lunar Shatters
I came into the world a young man
Then I broke me off
Still the sea and clouds are Pegasus colors
My heart is Pegasus colors but to get there I must go back
Back to the time before I was a woman
Before I broke me off to make a flattened lap
And placed thereon a young man
Where I myself could have dangled
And how I begged him enter there
My broken young man parts
And how I let the mystery collapse
With rugged young man puncture
And how I begged him turn me Pegasus colors
And please to put a sunset there
And gone forever was my feeling snake
And in its place dark letters
And me the softest of all
And me so skinless I could no longer be naked
And me I had to de-banshee
And me I dressed myself
I made a poison suit
I darned it out of myths
Some of the myths were beautiful
Some turned ugly in the making
The myth of the slender girl
The myth of the fat one
The myth of rescue
The myth of young men
The myth of the hair in their eyes
The myth of how beauty would save them
The myth of me and who I must become
The myth of what I am not
And the horses who are no myth
How they do not need to turn Pegasus
They are winged in their un-myth
They holy up the ground
I must holy up the ground
I sanctify the ground and say fuck it
I say fuck it in a way that does not invite death
I say fuck it and fall down no new holes
And I ride an unwinged horse
And I unbecome myself
And I strip my poison suit
And wear my crown of fuck its
– Melissa Broder (2014)