Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Jason.
The gallery
Jason with the Golden Fleece
Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1803 (marble 1828)
Thorvaldsen's breakthrough statue shows Jason after the fight — nude, helmeted, the Golden Fleece draped over his arm, spear in hand, frozen between rest and return. The marble (242 cm) in Copenhagen's Thorvaldsen Museum became a neoclassical emblem of the Argonaut hero.
Jason and Medea
Gustave Moreau, 1865
Moreau's Salon canvas pairs Jason with Medea after the fleece is won: the hero stands triumphant while the Colchian sorceress clings beside him amid jewel-like Symbolist detail. Oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay (RF 2780) — the Argonaut as ornate, ambiguous victor.
Jason and Medea
John William Waterhouse, 1907
Waterhouse stages the Colchian pact: Medea mixes the protective potion while Jason waits, the Pre-Raphaelite room crowded with charms that will let him face Aeëtes' bulls. Oil on canvas (private collection) — the hero as beneficiary of Medea's craft before Corinth's later betrayal.
Jason and the Dragon (Douris cup)
Douris, c. 480–470 BC
On this Attic red-figure kylix from Cerveteri, Jason is swallowed and regurgitated by the dragon that guards the Golden Fleece, while Athena stands by and the fleece hangs on the tree. Signed by Douris; Vatican Museums (inv. 16545) — one of the strangest ancient images of the Argonaut's ordeal.
On screen
Jason and the Argonauts
Don Chaffey
Harryhausen's stop-motion voyage is still the modern face of the quest: Jason, the Argo, the fleece, and the skeleton army rising from the dragon's teeth.
Medea
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pasolini's Jason is the Greek who takes Medea from Colchis and discards her in Corinth — the hero as colonial thief, filmed opposite Callas.
Jason and the Argonauts
Nick Willing
Hallmark's miniseries retells the voyage for television — Jason's claim on the fleece and on Medea restaged without Harryhausen's skeletons.
The Giants of Thessaly
Riccardo Freda
Italian peplum sends Jason against Thessalian giants for the fleece — the Argonaut voyage in sword-and-sandal shorthand.
In music & on stage
In play
Argonautica
Apollonius of Rhodes
The Hellenistic epic that fixed Jason's voyage: the Argo, the fleece, Medea's aid, and the crew of heroes — still the narrative spine of every later Argonaut retelling.
The Golden Fleece
The prize that defines Jason's quest — the ram's golden hide hung in Colchis — became a Western emblem of the unobtainable object of heroic desire.