Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Hippomenes.
The gallery
Atalanta and Hippomenes
Guido Reni, c. 1620–1625
In this Baroque masterpiece, oil on canvas now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Guido Reni freezes the decisive instant of Ovid's foot-race (Metamorphoses 10.560–707). Atalanta stoops mid-stride to snatch one of Aphrodite's golden apples while Hippomenes presses ahead toward the finish, his body twisting away from her. The two nudes form a sweeping diagonal of opposed motion against a darkened sky, their fluttering drapery and outstretched limbs balanced in an almost choreographic counterpoint that became one of the most celebrated images of the myth. A second autograph version hangs in the Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Hippomenes and Atalanta
Nicolas Colombel, c. 1680
The French classicist Nicolas Colombel, working in the manner of Poussin, stages the race as a luminous open-air scene (oil on canvas, Liechtenstein collections, Vienna). Atalanta breaks her stride to gather the gleaming golden apples scattered at her feet — the fruit Venus had given Hippomenes to delay the swift-footed virgin — while the suitor surges past her toward victory. Spectators and a classical landscape frame the contest, lending the decisive moment of Ovid's tale a measured, statuesque grandeur.
The Race between Hippomenes and Atalanta
Noël Hallé, c. 1765
Noël Hallé's vast canvas (over seven metres wide, today in the Louvre, INV 5270) treats the myth on a monumental, almost theatrical scale. Hippomenes races forward at full speed while Atalanta bends to retrieve a golden apple, the two figures set against a sweeping landscape thronged with onlookers and architecture. Painted in the grand-goût history-painting tradition of the French Academy, the work transforms Ovid's contest of love and cunning into a sprawling neoclassical spectacle.
In play
Hippomenes
The suitor who beat Atalanta with Aphrodite's golden apples remains the type of cunning over speed — and of love that later turns to lions.
Golden apple
Hippomenes' three apples joined the golden-apple stock of myth — distraction as the only way to win the uncatchable runner.