Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Ganymede.
The gallery
The Abduction of Ganymede
Rembrandt, 1635
Oil painting by Rembrandt in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. Where tradition pictured Ganymede as a beautiful youth, Rembrandt paints him as a terrified, bawling infant snatched up in the eagle's grip, urinating in fright — a pointed, earthbound subversion of the classical subject.
The Rape of Ganymede
Peter Paul Rubens, 1636–1638
Oil painting by Peter Paul Rubens, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, painted for the Torre de la Parada, the hunting lodge of Philip IV of Spain. Following Ovid's Metamorphoses, the eagle of Jupiter sweeps the Trojan youth into the heavens, where he will serve as cupbearer of the gods.
The Abduction of Ganymede
Antonio da Correggio, c. 1530
Oil painting by Antonio da Correggio in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, companion piece to his Jupiter and Io. The eagle lifts Ganymede from a wooded hillside into the open sky as the boy turns his gaze back toward the viewer, his dog barking after him from the ground below.
In play
Ganymede (moon)
Jupiter's largest moon — and the largest in the solar system — took the cupbearer's name, so the Trojan youth still orbits the king of the gods.
Ganymede
The Trojan cupbearer remains the emblem of divine abduction and beauty taken to Olympus — eagle, crater, and the moon that still bears his name.