Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Melanion.
The gallery
The François Vase (Calydonian Boar Hunt, detail)
Kleitias (painter) and Ergotimos (potter), c. 570 BC
On this Attic black-figure volute krater, the masterpiece of the painter Kleitias, a continuous frieze unfurls the hunt of the Calydonian boar. Among the assembled heroes the Arcadian Melanion takes his place beside Atalanta, the swift huntress he would later win, the pair labelled in inscriptions that make the vase one of the earliest surviving visual attestations of their partnership. The vessel, recovered in fragments from an Etruscan tomb at Chiusi, is preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Florence.
Hippomenes and Atalanta
Guillaume Coustou the Elder, 1769 (completed by Nicolas Coustou's design tradition; carved 18th century)
This marble group seizes the climactic instant of the foot-race: the suitor strides forward at full sprint while Atalanta breaks stride to stoop after a golden apple rolling at her feet, her body twisting against the line of the race. The sculptor renders in stone the trick by which the hero — called Melanion in the Arcadian tradition and Hippomenes in the Boeotian — used Aphrodite's apples to overtake the unbeatable runner and claim her as his bride. The work is held in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Atalanta and Hippomenes
Guido Reni, c. 1620–1625
Guido Reni's celebrated Baroque canvas freezes the decisive heartbeat of the contest against a dark, near-empty ground that throws two luminous nude figures into balletic counterpoint. The suitor — the hero who in Arcadia bears the name Melanion — surges ahead with arm flung back, while Atalanta bends low to snatch a golden apple from the earth, the gesture that costs her the race and her freedom. Painted in Reni's most refined classicising manner, the picture is one of the artist's most famous works and hangs in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples.
The Race of Hippomenes and Atalanta
Noël Hallé, 1762–1765
Noël Hallé's grand Rococo composition stages the foot-race as a swirling, sun-struck spectacle, with the hero racing past a tumble of golden apples while Atalanta, lured by Aphrodite's lustrous fruit, falters at the very threshold of victory. Spectators and putti animate the landscape as the divine stratagem plays out, sealing the marriage of the suitor — Melanion in the Arcadian account — to the huntress who had outrun every rival before him. The painting is held in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.