Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Electra.
The gallery
The Pleiades
Elihu Vedder, 1885
Vedder's Metropolitan Museum canvas gathers Atlas' seven star-daughters in a luminous void, each with a threaded star. Electra — the Samothracian Pleiad who bore Dardanus and Iasion to Zeus, and whose dimmed star was later read as the 'lost Pleiad' mourning Troy — stands among the celestial sisters, not the Mycenaean princess of the same name.
The Dance of the Pleiades (Star Lore of All Ages, plate)
After Elihu Vedder, 1911
Olcott's 1911 star-lore plate reproduces Vedder's circling Pleiades as dancers of the night sky. Electra is one of the seven — mother of the Trojan line through Dardanus — carried into popular astronomy as myth and constellation together.
Study for "The Pleiades"
Elihu Vedder, c. 1885
Metropolitan Museum study for Vedder's Pleiades: the seven sisters take shape in chalk and wash — among them Electra, the Pleiad of Samothrace whose son Dardanus founded the line of Troy.
The Rising of the Pleiades (illustration to Hesiod)
John Flaxman, c. 1817 (1910 plate)
Flaxman's outline for Hesiod's Works and Days: the rising of the Pleiades marks the farmer's calendar — the star-cluster that is also Electra and her sisters written into harvest time.