Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Glaucus.
The gallery
Circe Invidiosa
John William Waterhouse, 1892
Waterhouse paints Circe poisoning the bay for Scylla — the jealous revenge that answers Glaucus' refusal. The sea-god himself is off-canvas, but the green pour is the climax of his Ovidian love story (Art Gallery of South Australia).
Glaucus and Scylla
J. M. W. Turner, 1841
Turner's late oil dissolves Ovid's sea-chase into light and spray: Glaucus, the blue-green fisherman-god, pursues Scylla across a boiling gulf while Circe's jealousy waits offstage. The painting (once at the Kimbell) is among the most famous modern images of the Anthedonian sea-god's doomed love.
Glaucus and Scylla
Bartholomeus Spranger, c. 1580–1582
Mannerist panel in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (GG 2615): Spranger gives Glaucus a muscular sea-god's body as he reaches for the fleeing nymph Scylla, the Ovidian pursuit that Circe will answer with poison. Prague court taste made the Anthedonian fisherman a glamorous marine lover.
Glaucus and Scylla
Salvator Rosa, c. 1660–1670
Rosa's dark coastal drama: the transformed Glaucus, still half wild after the herb, stretches toward Scylla on a rocky shore while the sea behind them promises Circe's revenge. The painting keeps Ovid's Metamorphoses as a storm of desire rather than a polite mythological idyll.
Glaucus and Scylla
Laurent de La Hyre, 1640–1644
French classical canvas at the J. Paul Getty Museum (84.PA.13): La Hyre stages Glaucus' plea to Scylla with cool clarity — the sea-god's blue flesh and the nymph's recoil before Circe ruins the strait. It is one of the cleanest seventeenth-century readings of the Anthedonian love story.