Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Orion.
The gallery
Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun
Nicolas Poussin, 1658
Poussin's vast Met landscape: the blinded giant hunter rides on Cedalion's shoulders toward the dawn that will restore his sight — Orion as a mountain of flesh under a cool classical sky.
Diana next to the Corpse of Orion
Daniel Seiter, c. 1685
Seiter's Louvre canvas: Diana looks down on the slain hunter whose love and death she shares — Orion's body as the pause before the stars take his name.
Diana and Orion
Circle of Johann Heinrich Tischbein, after 1762
Kasseler Rococo encounter: the spear-bearing hunter meets the hunting goddess, Cupid at the edge — Orion still alive in the moment before the myth turns fatal.
Orion (libretto frontispiece)
Robert Bonnart / Jean-Baptiste Scotin, 1728
Engraved frontispiece for Lacoste's opera Orion: the hunter and Diana framed for the stage — the myth as Parisian libretto ornament.
In music & on stage
L'Orione
Francesco Cavalli
Cavalli's Delos opera stages Diana's love for the giant hunter and the trick that makes her shoot him — Orion lamented before the heavens take him.
Orion
Louis de La Coste
Lacoste's tragédie lyrique after the Boeotian hunter: Orion blinded for Merope, healed by Cedalion, then killed when Diana's love turns fatal — the myth as Paris Opéra spectacle.
In play
Orion (constellation)
The hunter became a sky-map: Orion's belt and sword are still the first constellation many people learn to name — the myth pinned among the winter stars.
Orion's Belt
Three aligned stars — Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka — keep the hunter's name in everyday speech as the belt that marks him across the night.