Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Philomela.
The gallery
Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itylus
Peter Paul Rubens, 1636-1638
Oil on panel by Peter Paul Rubens, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. It depicts the horrific climax of the Philomela myth as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses: the Athenian princess Philomela, raped and silenced by her sister Procne's husband, the Thracian king Tereus, takes her revenge alongside Procne by serving Tereus the flesh of his own son Itys. The two sisters thrust the boy's severed head before the startled king at the banquet, while Tereus recoils in horror and reaches for his sword. Painted for Philip IV's Torre de la Parada, the violent diagonal composition captures the instant before all three are transformed into birds.
Philomela and Procne Preparing to Kill Itys (Attic red-figure wine cup)
Unknown, c. 490 BC
Attic red-figure kylix (wine cup) of about 490 BC, now in the Louvre, Paris. The interior tondo shows the sisters Philomela and Procne at the grim turning point of their shared myth, resolving to slay the child Itys in vengeance against Tereus, who had raped Philomela and cut out her tongue. This early image confirms that the gruesome Athenian legend of the two sisters was already a familiar subject for the painters of classical Greek vases, long before Ovid gave it its definitive literary form.
The Rape of Philomela by Tereus
Virgil Solis, 1562
Engraving by the German printmaker Virgil Solis, made to illustrate Book VI of Ovid's Metamorphoses (verses 519-562). It shows the opening crime of the tragedy: Tereus, king of Thrace, has carried his sister-in-law Philomela off to a remote forest stronghold, where he assaults her and will soon cut out her tongue so she cannot denounce him. Solis's widely copied Ovid illustrations spread the iconography of the Philomela story across sixteenth-century Europe, where it was read as a warning against tyranny and unbridled lust.
Philomela and Procne Showing the Head of Itys to Tereus
Johann Wilhelm Baur, 1703
Engraving by Johann Wilhelm Baur from a 1703 illustrated edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book VI, lines 621-647). It dramatizes the moment of revenge in which Philomela and her sister Procne reveal to the Thracian king Tereus that the banquet he has just eaten was the flesh of his own son Itys, holding up the boy's severed head. Baur's tightly packed Baroque composition condenses the table, the shocked king, and the avenging sisters into a single charged scene, just before all three are metamorphosed into birds.