Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen The ivory maiden.
The gallery
Pygmalion and Galatea
Anne-Louis Girodet, 1813–1819
Girodet's Louvre canvas catches the ivory maiden as flesh: Cupid's torch lights the statue-bride while Pygmalion kneels. Ovid never names her Galatea, but reception made the living ivory the Galatea of the salon.
Pygmalion Praying Venus to Animate His Statue
Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1785
Regnault's Origin of Sculpture: the ivory virgin still on her pedestal while Pygmalion begs Venus for life — the bride before the kiss that will make her mother of Paphos.
Pygmalion and Galatea
Jean-Léon Gérôme, c. 1890
Gérôme's academic kiss: marble softens from the lips downward as the sculptor's bride comes alive — the definitive modern image of the ivory maiden.
Pygmalion and the Image: The Soul Attains
Edward Burne-Jones, 1875–1878
Burne-Jones' final Birmingham panel: the image steps living from the pedestal into Pygmalion's arms — the soul attained, the statue become bride.
In music & on stage
In play
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Book 10: the unnamed ivory virgin Venus warms to life — mother of Paphos, the Cypriot eponym, and the root of every later Galatea.
Galatea (video game)
Emily Short
Short's interactive fiction puts the player opposite the living statue — Galatea answering from the pedestal in a landmark of IF conversation.
Galatea
Later tradition names Pygmalion's bride Galatea — carefully distinct from Galatea the Nereid beloved of Acis.