Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Mestra.
The gallery
Erysichthon Selling his Daughter Mestra
Jan Steen, c. 1650–1660
Rijksmuseum SK-A-2572: starving Erysichthon sells Mestra — who will change shape and escape, then be sold again. Jan Steen’s Ovidian scene makes the Thessalian shapeshifter the repeated merchandise of her father’s hunger.
Erysichthon and Mestra
Johann Wilhelm Baur, c. 1639–1641
Baur’s Metamorphoses plate stages the father-daughter bargain Ovid tells in Book VIII — Mestra’s Protean gift against Erysichthon’s bottomless appetite. Baroque line keeps her name (here Mnestra) beside the crime against Demeter’s grove.