Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Philyra.
The gallery
Saturn and Philyra
After Giorgio Vasari / Stradanus, 16th century
Cronus (Saturn), transformed into a stallion to hide from Rhea, couples with the Oceanid Philyra — the union that will bear the centaur Chiron. Renaissance mythography loved this equine disguise; the print keeps Philyra as mother of the wisest of the Centaurs.
Saturn in the guise of a horse being suckled by the nymph Philyra
Unknown (Italian print), 16th century
A Metropolitan Museum engraving titles the scene outright: Saturn as a horse nursed or attended by Philyra. The Oceanid of Pelion is fixed as the nymph of Cronus' equine metamorphosis and Chiron's conception.
Saturn and the Nymph Philyra
Unknown (Dutch engraving), 16th–17th century
Dutch print culture restages Saturnus with Philyra — the Oceanid whose shame at bearing a half-horse child (in some tellings) drives her to become a linden tree, while Chiron remains the immortal tutor of heroes.
Saturn and Philyra
Parmigianino, c. 1534
Parmigianino's drawing (Royal Collection) isolates the nymph with the horse-formed Titan — Mannerist line for the myth that makes Philyra mother of Chiron on Mount Pelion.
In play
Chiron
Philyra's son by Cronus is the wise Centaur — the Oceanid remembered whenever the tutor of Achilles and Asclepius is named.
Philyra (mythology)
Oceanid daughter of Oceanus; by Cronus in horse-form she bore Chiron — and in some accounts became the linden (philyra) that still bears her name.