Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen The Gigantes.
The gallery
The Gigantomachy frieze of the Pergamon Altar
Hellenistic sculptors of Pergamon (anonymous), c. 180–160 BC
Detail of the great marble frieze that wrapped the base of the Pergamon Altar, now reconstructed in the Pergamonmuseum, Berlin. In high relief the Olympian gods storm down upon the Gigantes — the giant sons of Gaia born from the blood of castrated Ouranos — who fight back with serpent-legged bodies, boulders and torches. The frieze is the most ambitious surviving ancient depiction of the Gigantomachy, the cosmic battle in which Zeus and the Olympians, aided by Heracles, defeat the earth-born giants and confirm the new divine order, a victory the Attalid kings invoked as an allegory of their own triumph over barbarian invaders.
Attic black-figure neck-amphora: Athena intervening in the Gigantomachy
Attic black-figure vase-painter (anonymous), c. 550–530 BC
An Attic black-figure neck-amphora (Vatican Museums, MV-MGE 381) painted with a scene from the Gigantomachy. Armed Olympians close in upon the Gigantes in single combat, with Athena striding into the duel — the goddess who, in the canonical telling, hurls the island of Sicily upon the giant Enceladus. Battles of gods against the earth-born giants were a favourite subject of Athenian potters of the sixth century BC, the imagery resonating with the Gigantomachy woven onto Athena's peplos at the Panathenaic festival.
The Fall of the Giants (Sala dei Giganti)
Giulio Romano, 1530–1532
Giulio Romano's overwhelming illusionistic fresco that engulfs the entire Sala dei Giganti of the Palazzo del Te in Mantua. Enthroned in the heavens, Zeus hurls his thunderbolts while the Gigantes are crushed beneath collapsing mountains and toppling architecture, their bodies tumbling down the walls so that the whole room seems to be caving in on the viewer. The Mannerist masterpiece reimagines the ancient Gigantomachy — the Olympians' destruction of Gaia's giant brood — as a vertiginous spectacle of cosmic order annihilating rebellious chaos.