Athena and Her Goat Father Painting

When I first started painting daily in December 2020, I was working on a Goddess challenge. When I got to Athena, my first thought was "mean girl", and I based my painting on Regina George from the movie Mean Girls. How dare she punish Medusa for being raped. Not cool, Athena. Since then, I've learned that this story of Medusa's punishment was a rather recent addition to Greek mythology, written by the Roman poet Ovid, around 8 CE, well after the classical period of Greek mythology. From Robert Graves, I learned that Plato identified Athena with the Libyan Goddess, Neith, "who belonged to an epoch when fatherhood was unrecognized... virgin priestesses of Neith engaged annually in armed combat, apparently for the position of high priestess." Herodotus writes, "Athene's garments and aegis were borrowed by the Greeks from the Libyan women, who are dressed in exactly the same way, except that their leather garments are fringed with thongs, not serpents." Regarding the story of Medusa's head forming Athena's aegis, from Tzetzes, Graves reports, "Some Hellenes say that Athene had a father named Pallas, a winged goatish giant, who later attempted to outrage her, and whose name she added to her own after stripping him of his skin to make the aegis, and of his wings for her own shoulders." My painting is of baby Athena and her goat father.

Painting:Acrylic on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:11 W x 14 H x 0.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.