Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Hebe.
The gallery
Hebe
Antonio Canova, 1808
Carved in white marble by the great Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, this version of his celebrated Hebe (1808, Sculpture Gallery, Chatsworth House) shows the goddess of youth in mid-stride, drapery streaming behind her as if caught in flight. She tilts a small jug above an upraised cup, frozen in the act of pouring the nectar that keeps the Olympians forever young — her own everlasting role as cupbearer to the gods. Canova returned to the subject repeatedly; the airy poise, gauzy clinging fabric, and the figure's serene, dewy freshness made his Hebe one of the defining images of divine youth in European sculpture.
Hebe Giving Drink to the Eagle of Jupiter
Gavin Hamilton, 1767
The Scottish Neoclassical painter and antiquarian Gavin Hamilton depicts Hebe in her Olympian office as cupbearer, here serving not the assembled gods but the great eagle of her father Zeus (Jupiter). Seated amid clouds, the goddess of youth inclines toward the bird with a shallow vessel, the intimacy of the gesture underscoring her domestic place within the divine household of Zeus and Hera. Hamilton's restrained classicism and idealized form are characteristic of the eighteenth-century revival of antique subjects.
Hebe Offering a Cup to Jupiter in the Form of an Eagle
Gaspare Landi, 1790
The Italian Neoclassical painter Gaspare Landi shows the youthful Hebe extending a brimming cup toward Zeus, who has assumed the shape of his sacred eagle. As daughter of Zeus and Hera and cupbearer to the Olympians — the role Homer assigns her in the Iliad, where 'the queenly Hebe poured them nectar' — she embodies eternal youth and the ritual hospitality of the gods. Landi balances tender attention with classical grace, the goddess's flowing robes and the powerful bird forming a harmonious mythological group.
Portrait of Anna Pitt as Hebe
Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1792
In this mythological portrait, the celebrated French painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun casts her sitter, Anna Pitt, in the guise of Hebe, goddess of youth. The young woman reclines among clouds beside Zeus's eagle, holding aloft the cup of nectar that is Hebe's emblem as cupbearer of the gods. The conceit — flattering a living beauty by likening her to the eternally youthful daughter of Zeus and Hera — was a favorite of eighteenth-century portraiture, and Vigée-Lebrun renders it with luminous color and effortless charm, the eagle's wing sheltering the radiant figure.
In play
Hebe (mythology)
Neoclassical art kept Hebe as the eternal cupbearer of youth — the goddess who pours for the gods became a favourite subject for marble and porcelain.
6 Hebe
The sixth asteroid discovered took the cupbearer's name — youth among the rocks between Mars and Jupiter.