Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Gaia.
The gallery
Gaea
Anselm Feuerbach, 1875
A ceiling painting by the German classicist Anselm Feuerbach at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. It presents Gaia, the primordial mother of the earth, as a serene figure enthroned in the heavens, part of the decorative program Feuerbach created for the academy in his final years.
Tellus in the Aion Mosaic
Unknown (Roman), c. 250 AD
A Roman floor mosaic showing Aion, god of eternal time, standing within the ring of the zodiac, while the earth mother Tellus — the Roman counterpart of Gaia — reclines beside him with children often interpreted as the four seasons. Excavated at Sentinum in Italy, the mosaic is now in the Glyptothek in Munich.
In play
Gaia hypothesis
James Lovelock
Lovelock named Earth's living system Gaia — the primordial mother rewritten as a scientific metaphor for a self-regulating planet.
Gaia
Environmental and New Age language still calls the Earth Gaia — Hesiod's first mother as the everyday name for the living world.