Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Uranus.
The gallery
The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn
Giorgio Vasari & Cristofano Gherardi, c. 1560
Fresco by Giorgio Vasari and Cristofano Gherardi in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. It depicts the primal act of the succession myth as told in Hesiod's Theogony: Saturn (Cronus) wields the sickle against his father Uranus, the primordial sky, ending the sky-god's reign over the cosmos.
Aion–Uranus in the Zodiac Wheel (mosaic)
Unknown (Roman), c. 250 AD
Roman floor mosaic from Sentinum in Italy, now in the Glyptothek in Munich. The youthful god of eternal time, Aion — here identified with Uranus as lord of the heavens — stands inside the wheel of the zodiac, while the earth goddess reclines below with her children, the seasons.
Uranus and the Dance of the Stars
Karl Friedrich Schinkel, c. 1834
Schinkel's Romantic sky-father: Ouranos enthroned among circling constellations — the primordial heaven as architecture of light rather than Hesiod's wounded giant.
Cronus Castrating Uranus
Unknown (French), c. 1501
A French Renaissance miniature of the Theogony's founding crime: Cronus raises the sickle against Uranus — Heaven cut from Earth at the dawn of the Titans.
Castration of Uranus
After Polidoro da Caravaggio, retouched by Peter Paul Rubens, 16th–17th century
A drawing after Polidoro's Roman façade invention, later touched by Rubens: Saturn's assault on the sky-god — the succession myth circulating as a collector's sheet.