Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Sisyphus.
The gallery
Sisyphus
Titian, 1548–1549
One of Titian's underworld Furias for Mary of Hungary: Sisyphus strains beneath the boulder he must forever drive uphill, cliffs and infernal fire closing around him. Oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid — the Corinthian king's punishment as a colossal single figure of futile labour.
Sisyphus
Antonio Zanchi, c. 1660–1665
The Venetian Baroque painter crowds the eternal sentence into a dark, muscular canvas: Sisyphus locked against the rock that will always roll back down. Oil on canvas in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (inv. 335) — the crafty king of Corinth reduced to raw, repeating effort.
Sisyphus
Franz von Stuck, 1920
Stuck's Symbolist Sisyphus bends naked into the stone, the hillside a stark plane of struggle without landscape comfort. Painted in 1920, the image became one of the modern emblems of the absurd labour Camus would later name — the boulder as destiny.
On screen
In play
The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus
Camus' essay makes the rolling stone the emblem of the absurd — and ends by imagining Sisyphus happy, turning the underworld labour into modern philosophy's most famous image of defiance.
Sisyphean
English borrowed the king's name for any endless, futile labour — a daily word that keeps the Corinthian punishment alive long after the underworld scene is forgotten.
Hades
Supergiant Games
Supergiant's underworld roguelike keeps Sisyphus as a cheerful boulder-pusher in Tartarus — the eternal sentence turned into a warm, talkative side character.