Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Hippolyta.
The gallery
Hercules Obtaining the Girdle of Hippolyta
Nikolaus Knüpfer, c. 1640–1655
This small oil panel by the German-born Dutch painter Nikolaus Knüpfer stages the climax of Heracles' ninth labour: the hero confronting Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, to win the war-belt of Ares she wore in token of her supremacy. Knüpfer renders the encounter as a turbulent baroque drama of armed warriors and rearing horses, evoking the moment Apollodorus describes when Hera, disguised as an Amazon, spread the rumor that the strangers were abducting the queen, turning a promised peaceful handover into bloodshed. The painting is held in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.
Hercule saisissant Hippolyte, reine des Amazones (Hercules Seizing Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons)
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 19th century
In this preparatory drawing the French Neoclassical master Ingres distills the violent core of the labour into pure line: Heracles overpowering the Amazon queen Hippolyta to seize the belt of Ares. Ingres, a lifelong student of antique heroic subjects, captures the wrestling tension of the two figures with the disciplined contour for which his draftsmanship is celebrated. The sheet is preserved in the Musée Ingres Bourdelle in Montauban.
Hunting Amazons (Roman mosaic with Hippolyte, Melanippe, Penthesileia and Thermodosa)
Unknown, 5th–6th century AD
A late-antique Roman floor mosaic depicting four named Amazons at the hunt — Melanippe and Penthesileia mounted on horseback while Hippolyte and Thermodosa pursue game on foot — set amid wild animals and Eros figures in the border. The labelled figure of Hippolyte preserves the ancient image of the belt-bearing queen of the Amazons in the medium of monumental decoration, showing how her legend persisted in domestic art centuries after the classical vase tradition.
On screen
Wonder Woman
Patty Jenkins
Connie Nielsen's Hippolyta is queen of Themyscira and Diana's mother — the Amazon who hid the Godkiller and still lets her daughter leave the island.
Wonder Woman
The Lynda Carter series keeps Hippolyta as the island queen who sends Diana into Man's World — the mythic mother behind the lasso and the invisible jet.