CRONUS
Kronos (Κρόνος) · Roman Saturn
Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Cronus.
Saturn Devouring His Son
Francisco Goya, 1819–1823
One of Goya's Black Paintings, executed directly on the walls of his house outside Madrid and later transferred to canvas. It shows the Titan with nightmarish intensity, devouring one of his children to forestall the prophecy that a son would overthrow him. Now in the Museo del Prado, it has become the defining modern image of Cronus.
Saturn Devouring His Son
Peter Paul Rubens, 1636
A Baroque oil painting commissioned for the Torre de la Parada, the Spanish royal hunting lodge. Rubens depicts Saturn tearing into his infant son beneath his scythe, rendering the myth with visceral naturalism. The work hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid and anticipates Goya's later treatment of the same subject.
The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn
Giorgio Vasari & Cristofano Gherardi, c. 1560
An oil-on-panel ceiling painting from the Sala degli Elementi of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. It depicts the pivotal act of divine succession in Hesiod's Theogony: Cronus castrating his father Uranus, the sky, with the adamantine sickle.