Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Deianira.
The gallery
Nessus and Deianira (Neso y Deyanira)
Enrique Simonet, 1888
A late nineteenth-century academic oil on canvas (116 x 151 cm) by the Spanish painter Enrique Simonet, depicting the pivotal abduction that seals Deianira's tragedy. As Heracles carries his bride across the river Evenus, the centaur Nessus seizes the struggling Deianira and gallops away; her twisting, alarmed pose and outstretched arm capture the moment before Heracles' arrow strikes the centaur down. It is the centaur's dying deceit at this scene that later furnishes Deianira with the poisoned 'love-charm', the source of the doomed shirt of Nessus.
Heracles, Deianira and Nessus (Attic black-figure hydria, Louvre E 803)
Attributed to the Painter of Vatican 309, c. 575-550 BCE
An Attic black-figure hydria of the second quarter of the sixth century BCE, now in the Louvre (Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, E 803). The vase shows the confrontation at the river crossing: Heracles, Deianira, and the centaur Nessus, the earliest and most enduring iconographic moment of Deianira's myth. The episode underlies the version preserved by Apollodorus, in which Nessus assaults Deianira mid-river and his blood becomes the supposed love-charm she will one day fatally use.
Hercules and Deianira (Pompeian fresco)
Unknown, 1st century CE
A Roman wall painting from Pompeii (first century CE) showing Hercules together with Deianira, the wife he won in a wrestling-match against the river-god Achelous. The fresco belongs to the domestic decorative repertoire of Campania, where mythological couples adorned the walls of well-appointed houses, and it preserves the more serene, conjugal aspect of a heroine otherwise remembered for the tragic gift of the poisoned tunic.