Cronus

Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya.

It depicts the Greek myth of Cronus (in the title Romanised to Saturn), who, fearing that his children would supplant him, ate each one upon their birth.

 

 It is one of the series of Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823.

After Goya's death the work was transferred to canvas, and now resides in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Saturn Devouring His Son, a disturbing portrait of the god Saturn consuming one of his children, was one of six works with which Goya decorated the dining room. According to Roman myth, it had been foretold that one of the sons of Saturn would overthrow him, just as he had overthrown his father, Caelus.

To prevent this coming to pass, Saturn would eat each of his children as soon as they were born. His wife Ops eventually hid his sixth son, Jupiter, on the island of Crete, deceiving Saturn by offering a stone wrapped in swaddling in his place. Just as the prophecy had predicted, Jupiter eventually supplanted his father .

Goya may have been inspired by Peter Paul Rubens' 1636 picture of the same name. Rubens' painting, also held at the Museo del Prado, is a brighter, more conventional treatment of the myth: his Saturn exhibits none of the cannibalistic ferocity portrayed in Goya's rendition.

However, some critics have suggested that Rubens' portrayal is the more horrific: the god is portrayed as a calculating remorseless killer, who – fearing for his own position of power – murders his innocent child.

Goya's vision, on the other hand, shows a man driven mad by the act of killing his own son. In addition, the body of the son in Goya's picture is that of an adult, not the helpless baby depicted by Rubens.

Goya had produced a chalk drawing of the same subject in 1796-7 that was closer in tone to Rubens' work: it showed a Saturn similar in appearance to that of Rubens', daintily biting on the leg of one of his sons while he holds another like a leg of chicken, with none of the gore or madness of the later work.

 Cannibalism ...as old as the hills.

Medusa

The three Gorgon sisters—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale—were children of the ancient marine deities Phorcys and his sister Ceto, or sometimes (and much less probably), Typhon and Echidna, in each case chthonic monsters from an archaic world.

 This painting above of her head is by an unknown Flemish artist.

Their genealogy is shared with other sisters, the Graeae, as in Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, who places both trinities of sisters far off "on Kisthene's dreadful plain":

Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged
With snakes for hair— hated of mortal man—

While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her sisters as beings born of monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the fifth century began to envisage her as a being both beautiful as well as terrifying. In an ode written in 490 BC Pindar already speaks of "fair-cheeked Medusa".

In a late version of the Medusa myth, related by the Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.770), Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, "the jealous aspiration of many suitors," priestess in Athena's temple, but when she was raped, or seduced, by the "Lord of the Sea" Poseidon in Athena's temple, the enraged virgin goddess transformed her beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone. In Ovid's telling, Perseus describes Medusa's punishment by Athena as just and well-deserved.

In the majority of the versions of the story, while Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon, she was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus as a gift.

With help from Athena and Hermes, who supplied him with winged sandals, Hades' cap of invisibility, a sword, and a mirrored shield, he accomplished his quest.

The hero slew Medusa by looking at her harmless reflection in the mirror instead of directly at her to prevent being turned into stone.
When the hero severed Medusa's head from her neck, two offspring sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor who later became the hero wielding the golden sword.

This painting of the head of Madusa is by Caravaggio

Jane Ellen Harrison argues that "her potency only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a body later appended... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood."

In Odyssey xi, Homer does not specifically mention the Gorgon Medusa:

"Lest for my daring Persephone the dread,
From Hades should send up an awful monster's grisly head."

Harrison's translation states "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon."

According to Ovid, in North-West Africa Perseus flew past the Titan Atlas, who stood holding the sky aloft, and transformed him into stone. In a similar manner, the corals of the Red Sea were said to have been formed of Medusa's blood spilled onto seaweed when Perseus laid down the petrifying head beside the shore during his short stay in Aethiopia where he saved and wed his future wife, the lovely princess Andromeda.

Furthermore the poisonous vipers of the Sahara, in the Argonautica 4.1515, Ovid's Metamorphoses 4.770 and Lucan's Pharsalia 9.820, were said to have grown from spilt drops of her blood.

Perseus then flew to Seriphus where his mother was about to be forced into marriage with the king. King Polydectes was turned into stone by the gaze of Medusa's head.

Then he gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis.h/t wiki

Judith Beheading Holofernes

Holofernes was an Assyrian invading general of Nebuchadnezzar, who appears in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith.

It was said that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar dispatched Holofernes to take vengeance on the nations of the west that had withheld their assistance to his reign.

The general laid siege to Bethulia, commonly believed to be Meselieh, and the city almost surrendered.

It was saved by Judith, a beautiful Hebrew widow who entered Holofernes's camp and seduced him. Judith then beheaded Holofernes while he was drunk. She returned to Bethulia with the disembodied head, and the Hebrews defeated the enemy.

Holofernes is depicted in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Monk's Tale in The Canterbury Tales, and in Dante's Purgatorio (where Holofernes is to be found on the Terrace of pride). As a painter's subject it offers the chance to contrast the flesh and jewels of a beautiful, festively attired woman with the grisly victim, an Old Testament parallel to the New Testament vignette of Salome with the head of John the Baptist.

 I`m sure you will agree,not a woman to be messed with.
The painting is by a favourite of mine,Caravaggio
This is the first time Caravaggio chose such a highly dramatic subject.

The original bare breasts of Judith were later covered by the semi-transparent blouse. The rough details and the realistic precision (correct down to the tiniest details of anatomy and physiology) have caused some to think that the painting was inspired by two highly publicized Roman executions of the time: that of Giordano Bruno and Beatrice Cenci in 1599.

The model for Judith is Fillide Melandroni, a well-known courtesan of the day, whom Caravaggio used for several other paintings from around this time, notably Saint Catherine and Martha and Mary Magdalene. Leonardo da Vinci's drawing Study for a Caricature inspired the servant woman.ht/wiki

The look of cold concentration on Judith`s face, as she cut off his head is a chilling and masterful piece of art work.