Jean Cousin the Elder, ‘Eva Prima Pandora’, Louvre, Paris, 1550 It depicts a nude woman reclining in a natural landscape with a town in the distance. His painting ‘ Eva Prima Pandora‘, dating from the 1540s (now in the Louvre) is considered to be his masterpiece. One artist who was inspired by this episode was Jean Cousin the Elder, a 16th century French painter and engraver. However, it has given rise to the idea of ‘Pandora’s Box’ (rather than ‘Pandora’s Jar’). This was an error by the humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, who translated Hesiod’s work. This is largely attributed to a mistranslation of ‘ pithos‘, as a large storage jar, as ‘box’ (the original being ‘ pyxis‘). It has, however, diverted somewhat from Hesiod’s original account, as the jar is commonly referred to as a box. Images of Pandora began to appear on Greek pottery as early as the 5th century BC, and the drama of Pandora’s story has been a rich source of inspiration for later poets, dramatists, painters and sculptors throughout history. The truth about one of the most misunderstood figures of Ancient Greek mythology. The jar is a representation of any source of great and unexpected troubles, or a gift which seems valuable but turns out to be a curse. This story has gone down in time as an idiom. As Hesiod put it, the earth and sea were now ‘full of evils’. However, her disobedience soon backfires for as the jar is opened, ‘countless plagues’ are released into the world – an array of physical and emotional curses which torment mankind. Driven by intense curiosity, Pandora disobeys instructions and opens a forbidden jar. However, Pandora’s fame derives from a more sinister episode, connected with Hesiod’s poem Works and Days, dating from around 700 BC. She was given necklaces and clothing by the Charities, and a garland crown by the Horae, the goddesses of the seasons. Hermes, the herald of the Gods, gave her ‘a shameless mind and a deceitful nature’ as well as the power of rhetoric, with ‘lies and crafty words’. The goddess Aphrodite ‘shed grace upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs’. According to some sources, she was taught needlework and weaving by Athena. Thus her name has the meaning of ‘the all-endowed’, the ‘all-gifted’ or ‘all-giving’. She was the first human woman, created by Hephaestus on the instructions of the King of the Gods, Zeus.Īs she was created, Pandora was bestowed a unique attribute by each of the Gods. Pandora is one of the most notorious characters from Greek mythology.
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