Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Pyramus.
The gallery
Stormy Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe
Nicolas Poussin, 1651
Poussin's Frankfurt stormscape dwarfs the lovers under lightning: Pyramus fallen on his sword, Thisbe discovering him as the lion flees. Ovid's mulberry tragedy becomes a classical landscape of catastrophe.
Pyramus and Thisbe
Hans Baldung, 1530
Baldung's Berlin panel sets Thisbe over the dying Pyramus beneath the fatal mulberry — German Renaissance flesh and forest framing Ovid's double suicide. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
Pyramus and Thisbe
Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1520
Cranach stages the Babylonian lovers at the spring: Pyramus already wounded, Thisbe arriving too late. Saxon court style turns the Metamorphoses episode into a cool, jewelled tragedy.
Pyramus and Thisbe
Lucas Gassel, c. 1550
Gassel's panoramic landscape nests the mulberry rendezvous in a Flemish world-view — tiny lovers, vast hills, and the lion that started the misunderstanding. Ovid's wall-split romance as world landscape.
Pyramus and Thisbe
Pierre Gautherot, 1799
Gautherot's neoclassical canvas catches Thisbe's discovery of Pyramus — sword, blood, and the mulberry that will stain forever. Late-eighteenth-century pathos for Shakespeare's favourite Ovidian lovers.
In play
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Bottom as Pyramus — Shakespeare's mechanicals turn the Babylonian lover into the funniest tragic hero on stage.
Pyramus and Thisbe
The youth who loved through a wall and died under the mulberry — Ovid's template for tragic misunderstanding.