Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Itys.
The gallery
Procne and Itys
Alkamenes, c. 430-420 BC
This Classical marble group, attributed to the Athenian sculptor Alkamenes and dedicated on the Acropolis around 430-420 BC, fixes the most agonizing instant of the Tereus tragedy in stone. Procne stands tense and inward, her hand drawn back, while the small boy Itys presses against her leg, oblivious to the matricidal vengeance his mother is steeling herself to commit against him in retaliation for Tereus' rape and mutilation of her sister Philomela. The unfinished, brooding stillness of the mother contrasted with the trusting child gives the piece its enduring psychological power. Now in the Acropolis Museum, Athens.
Philomela and Procne Preparing to Kill Itys (Attic wine cup)
Unknown, c. 490-480 BC
On this Athenian red-figure wine cup of the early fifth century BC, the two sisters Procne and Philomela are shown at the threshold of their terrible revenge, advancing on the child Itys. The vase is among the earliest surviving Greek images of the myth in which Procne slays her own son and serves his flesh to his father, the Thracian king Tereus, as punishment for his violation of Philomela. The compact tondo composition concentrates the horror into a single, unblinking moment that Attic viewers would have known from local cult and tragedy.
Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itylus
Peter Paul Rubens, 1636-1638
Painted by Peter Paul Rubens in the late 1630s for Philip IV's Torre de la Parada, this large oil on panel dramatizes the climax of Ovid's Metamorphoses: Procne and Philomela thrust before the seated Tereus the severed head of his son Itys, whose flesh he has just unknowingly eaten. Rubens captures the explosive instant of recognition as Tereus recoils in horror and reaches for his sword, the sisters fleeing as the gods prepare to transform all of them into birds. The work hangs today in the Museo del Prado, Madrid.