 |
| Jacob Jordaens Figure Study for Neptune ca. 1617-20 drawing British Museum |
 |
| Willem Panneels after Peter Paul Rubens Nessus abducting Dejanira 1630 etching British Museum |
 |
| Francis Cleyn Birth of Jupiter ca. 1630-40 drawing British Museum |
 |
| Jan van Bronckhorst after Cornelis van Poelenburgh Juno in Clouds ca. 1636 etching British Museum |
 |
| Matthäus Merian the Elder Flora directing Nymphs with Garlands (half title-page to Florilegium Renovatum) 1641 etching and engraving Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
-c1644-engraving-British-Museum.jpg) |
| Grégoire Huret Mars and Minerva with Time asleep and Fame flying (half title-age to La Science Héroïque) 1644 engraving British Museum |
 |
| Giovanni Pietro Possenti Hercules rescuing Dejanira from Nessus ca. 1640-50 etching British Museum |
 |
| Anonymous Italian Artist Apollo and Daphne 17th century drawing British Museum |
 |
| Nicolaes Berchem The Infancy of Zeus 1648 oil on canvas Mauritshuis, The Hague |
 |
| Abraham van Diepenbeeck Pandora surrounded by Olympian Gods ca. 1655 drawing Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
 |
| Ciro Ferri Hercules at the Crossroads ca. 1670-80 drawing British Museum |
 |
| Giuseppe Diamantini Composition with Saturn and Rhea ca. 1675 etching British Museum |
-British-Museum.jpg) |
| Gérard de Lairesse Bacchanal ca. 1675 drawing (print study) British Museum |
-British-Museum.jpg) |
| Pietro Liberi Minerva defeating Giants ca. 1676 drawing (study for unexecuted print) British Museum |
 |
| attributed to Giulio Carpioni Orpheus playing to Satyrs and Amorini before 1678 drawing British Museum |
-private-collection.jpg) |
| Johann Heiss Triumph of the Sun ca. 1680-90 oil on canvas private collection (sold by Galerie Neuse Kunsthandel in Bremen, 2021) |
 |
| Giuseppe Maria Rolli after Lorenzo Pasinelli Sibyl with Putto ca. 1690 etching British Museum |
from Of the Answers of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphos to Croesus King of Lydia
In vayne wee looke for open sense in oracles, there was not only obscuritie in the recesse butt in the outside of Delphos; and the two letters EI set over the entrance of it have puzzled learned conjectures to expound the meaning of them. And to speake in generall of Oracles and Gentile divinations, there was no uniformitie in their deliveries; they being sometimes made with that obscuritie as argued a fearefull prophecy; sometimes so plainly as might conclude a spirit of divinity; sometimes morally, deterring from vice and villany; another time vitiously, and in the spirit of blood and crueltie; observably modest in that civill Enigma and periphrasis of that part which old Numa would playnely name when hee advised Aegeus not to drawe out his foot before, untill hee arrived on the Athenian ground; whereas another time the oracle seemed too literall in that unseemely epithite unto Cyanus King of Cyprus; and putt a beastly trouble upon Aegypt to find out the urine of a true virgin to cure the kings eyes.
– Sir Thomas Browne (1656)