Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Atropos.
The gallery
Atropos (The Fates)
Francisco Goya, 1819–1823
One of Goya's Black Paintings, painted directly onto the walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo, and later transferred to canvas. It shows the Fates hovering in a dark sky above a bound human figure, with Atropos bearing the shears that cut the thread of life. It now hangs in the Museo del Prado, Madrid.
A Golden Thread
John Melhuish Strudwick, 1885
Strudwick's Pre-Raphaelite allegory gathers the three Fates at their eternal labour: Clotho spins, Lachesis measures, and Atropos waits with the shears that no prayer can stay. The cutting sister — 'she who cannot be turned' — dominates the moral of the golden thread.
Atropos (House of Theseus mosaic, Paphos)
Unknown Roman mosaicist, late 3rd–early 4th century AD
Detail from the Achilles mosaic in the House of Theseus at Paphos: Atropos appears among the Fates attending the hero's infancy, the sister whose shears will one day cut even Achilles' glorious thread. A rare ancient floor image that isolates the cutter by name.
The Three Fates
Jacob Matham, c. 1590–1610
A circular engraving attributed to Jacob Matham, now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art: the Moirai share one medallion of distaff, measure and shears. Atropos, the inexorable cutter, completes the triad that Northern print culture spread across early modern Europe.
The Three Fates
Paul Thumann, c. 1880
Thumann's popular Salon image distinguishes the sisters sharply: Atropos with shears at the ready, young Clotho at the weave, and Lachesis measuring. The cutter of lots becomes the dark accent of a print that circulated widely in the nineteenth century.