Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Ischys.
The gallery
Apollo and Coronis
Johann König (after Adam Elsheimer), c. 1607
This small oil-on-copper cabinet picture, attributed to Johann König after a lost composition by Adam Elsheimer, shows Apollo with his mortal lover Coronis in a darkening landscape. It illustrates the tragic love at the heart of Ischys' story: while Coronis carries Apollo's child (the future Asclepius), her affair with Ischys, son of Elatus, will provoke the god's lethal vengeance. The intimate, twilight mood of this Northern European Renaissance work foreshadows the catastrophe to come. The painting is held at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario.
Apollo and Coronis (Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 2)
After Hendrik Goltzius, 1590
An engraving from a celebrated series illustrating Ovid's Metamorphoses, designed after Hendrik Goltzius. It depicts the encounter of Apollo and Coronis, the episode that frames the doom of Ischys: Coronis, pregnant by Apollo, takes Ischys as her lover, and the affair, betrayed by Apollo's white raven, ends in her death and in Ischys' destruction (by Apollo's arrows in one tradition, by Zeus' thunderbolt in another). The print is held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Apollo Kills Coronis (Apollo doodt Coronis), from Ovid's Metamorphoses
After Hendrick Goltzius (engraved by Franco Estius), 1590
This engraving from the Goltzius Metamorphoses series stages the violent climax that Ischys' affair sets in motion. Apollo draws his bow on the pregnant Coronis while the raven that exposed her infidelity with Ischys flies overhead; in the background the god extracts the unborn Asclepius from her body, and at the left her funeral pyre burns. Though Ischys himself is not figured here, the print renders the consequences of his fatal liaison with Coronis. It is held at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-P-1882-A-6376).