Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Pandora.
The gallery
Pandora
John William Waterhouse, 1896
Waterhouse's Pre-Raphaelite Pandora kneels over the fatal casket in a wooded hollow — Hesiod's first woman as curious opener, the jar restyled as a Victorian box. The moment before the world's troubles spill.
Pandora
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1871
Rossetti's half-length Pandora holds the sealed box against a sulphurous glow — Jane Morris as the gift the gods sent to punish mankind. The Pre-Raphaelite jar made into a jewel of dread.
Eva Prima Pandora
Jean Cousin the Elder, c. 1550
Cousin's Louvre masterpiece fuses Eve and Pandora on one reclining nude — the first woman as both biblical fall and Hesiodic jar. Renaissance France's great allegory of curiosity and ruin.
Pandora
Jules Lefebvre, 1872
Lefebvre's academic Pandora stands with the box still closed — beauty as bait, the gift Zeus sent through Epimetheus. Salon mythology at full polish: the woman who has not yet opened the world.
Pandora
Alexandre Cabanel, 1873
Cabanel's Walters portrait casts soprano Christine Nilsson as Pandora with the casket — high-society myth, the opener as celebrity. The jar becomes an opera singer's prop in Second Empire silk.