Andromeda (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Andromeda (in ancient Greek Ἀνδρομέδα, «ruler of men») was the daughter of the mythical kings of Ethiopia, Cepheus and Cassiopeia, as well as the wife of Perseus and mother of seven children.
History
Andromeda's mother, Cassiopeia, had committed hubris by boasting that her beauty, or that of her daughter, exceeded that of the Nereids. This provoked the fury of Poseidon, protector of the latter, so he decided to flood the earth and send a sea monster, the ceto, to destroy the men and cattle. Cepheus, father of Andromeda, knew from Ammon's oracle what was the only solution: to deliver his daughter to the monster. Consequently, her subjects forced him to chain her to a rock, naked except for certain jewels.
Perseus, who after killing Medusa had received winged sandals as a gift from some nymphs (identified with the Hesperides), saw her chained and fell in love with her, offering her some sweet words. He went down to the beach to Talk to Cepheus and Cassiopeia to ask for the girl's hand in exchange for ending the monster. The kings reluctantly accepted and Perseus, with the head of Medusa —which he turned whoever looked at it into stone— finished off the monster and turned it into a coral. The hero believed that his wedding with the young woman would be imminent, but there was a problem: Andromeda's mother had already promised her daughter to Prince Phineus, who was also the young woman's uncle, so Perseus had to fight him and all his entourage. Again, he used Medusa's head and managed to marry her beloved.
Andromeda followed Perseus to the island of Serifos. Later the couple moved to Tirinto (Argos) and had a daughter, Gorgófone, and six sons, known as the Perseids: first Perses and then Alceo, Méstor, Heleo, Electrión and Esténelo. Apollodorus himself tells us that the kings of Persia descend from his first son, Perses, his descendants ruled Mycenae from Electryon to Eurystheus —from whom Atreus obtained the crown—, passing through Heracles himself.
When Andromeda died, the goddess Athena placed her among the constellations of the northern sky, close to her husband and mother, Cassiopeia. She is represented in the sky of the northern hemisphere by the constellation Andromeda, which contains the Andromeda galaxy.
Sophocles and Euripides wrote several tragedies based on the story, and its incidents were depicted in numerous ancient works of art.
Cultural references
In the sky and the stars
Andromeda is represented in the sky of the northern hemisphere by the constellation Andromeda, which contains the Andromeda Galaxy.
Several constellations are associated with the myth. Considering the faintest stars visible to the naked eye, the constellations are represented as:
- A maiden (Andromeda) chained, looking or departing from the ecliptic.
- A warrior (Perseus), often represented holding Medusa's head, next to Andromeda.
- A huge man (Cefeo) with a crown, backwards with respect to the ecliptic.
- A smaller figure (Casiopea) next to the man, sitting in a chair; being near the polar star, can be seen by the observers of the northern hemisphere throughout the year, although sometimes backwards.
- A whale or sea monster (Cetus) right after Pisces, southeast.
- The flying horse Pegasus, who was born from Medusa's neck maid after Perseus decapitated her.
- The fish paired from the Piscis constellation, which in the myth were captured by the fisherman Dictis who was the brother of Polidectes, king of Serifos, the place where Perseus and his mother Danae were stranded.
In literature and theater
- Sophocles, Andromeda (sixteenth century)Va. C.), Greek tragedy lost except in fragments
- Euripides, Andromeda (412 BC), Greek tragedy lost except fragments; parodyed by Aristophanes in his comedy The Tesmoforiantes (411 BC) and influential in the ancient world
- The poem by George Chapman in heroic Coplas Andromeda liberata, o las nupcias de Perseo y Andromedawritten for the wedding in 1614 by Robert Carr, 1.♪ Count of Somerset and Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset.
- In the influential epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516-1532), appears a pagan princess named Angelica the Bella who at a given time is exactly in the same situation as Andromeda, chained naked to a rock at sea as a sacrifice to a sea monster, and is saved at the last moment by the Saracen knight Ruggiero.
- Lope de Vega wrote several works related to the subject: The fable of Perseus or the beautiful Andromeda (1611-1615) (1621), the epic poem The beauty of Angelica, linked to the work of Ariosto, the poems The Filomena and The Andromeda
.png)
- Pierre Corneille: Drama in verse Andromède (1650), popular for its scenic machinery effects, including Perseus on Pegasus while fighting the sea monster, whose success helped inspire the Persée opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully.
- Pedro Calderón de la Barca: the semi-opera The Fortunes of Perseus and Andromeda (1653)
- Dancer John Weaver, wrote the play Perseus and Andromeda (1716), a pantomima
- John Keats, in his sonnet On the Sonnet (1819) compares the restricted form of the sonnet with the Andromeda chained as "Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness"
- In Moby-Dick (1851), the narrator of Herman Melville, Ismael, treats the myth of Perseus and Andromeda in two chapters. Chapter 55, "Of the monstrous images of whales," mentions Perseus' representations by rescuing Andromeda from Cetus in works of art by Guido Reni and William Hogarth. In chapter 82, "The honor and glory of whale hunting," Ismael recounts the myth and says the Romans found a giant whale skeleton in Jope who believed it was Cetus skeleton.
- James Planché and Charles Dance, the Victorian burlesque work, The Deep deep sea, or Perseus and Andromeda; an original mythological, aquatic, equestrian burletta in one act (1857)
- Charles Kingsley's free verse that narrates the myth, Andromeda (1858)
- William Brough, the Victorian burlesque work Perseus and Andromeda, or, La Doncella and the Monster: A Classical Extravaganza (1861)
- William Morris tells the story of Perseus and Andromeda in his epic poem The Earthly Paradise (1868) in April: The Loss of King Acrisio
- Gerard Manley Hopkins: Sonnet Andromeda (1879) has had many interpretations
- Julia Constance Fletcher (who wrote under the pseudonym of George Fleming), was the author of "Andromeda, a novel" (1885).
- Robert Williams Buchanan, in his novel Andromeda, an idyll of the great river (1901), updates the myth using characters from a century fishing communityXIX in the River Thames
- Richard Le Gallienne: The prose version of the Ovidian account, Perseus and Andromeda, a story (1902)
- British poet, novelist and journalist Alphonse Courlander (1881-1914) published his long poem Perseus and Andromeda in 1903.
- Carlton Dawe: The 1909 novel The new Andromeda (published in America as The woman, the man and the monster) recounts the story of Andromeda in a modern environment
- Muriel Stuart wardrobe drama Andromeda Unfettered (1922), which presents: Andromeda, "the spirit of woman"; Perseus, "the new spirit of man"; a choir of "women who desire old slavery"; and a choir of "women who yearn for new freedom"
- Robert Nichols: short story Perseus and Andromeda (1923) tells the story in two styles contrasted satirically
- In his novel The sea, the sea (1978), Iris Murdoch uses Andromeda myth, as presented in a reproduction of Titian's painting Perseus and Andromedato reflect the character and motives of his characters.
- The poem by Michael McClure Fragments of Perseus (1983) "presents fragments of an imaginary diary of Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danae, the murderer of the Medusa of serpent hair and the husband of Andromeda"
- Andromeda is the main character of Harry Turtledove's 1999 short story Miss Manners' Guide to Greek Missology, a satire full of role investments, words games and deliberate anachronisms related to pop culture
- The protagonist of the work of Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper (2004) is called Andromeda, relating the fact that his parents expect him to sacrifice organs to keep his sister alive, with the mythical Andromeda who was sacrificed by his parents.
- In the series of adventure books by Rick Riordan Percy Jackson and the gods of the Olympus, the cruise that Percy and Annabeth approach for the first time in The Sea of Monsters and which is controlled by Luke and his group of mestizos that support Titan Lord Kronos is called Princess Andromeda, and carries a figurative header on the front of the princess's ship with a Greek chiton and an expression of terror.
In the plastic arts
Andromeda, and her role in the popular myth of Perseus, has been the subject of numerous ancient and modern works of art, depicting her as a typically beautiful, bound and defenseless young woman, faced with terrible danger, who must to be saved thanks to the unwavering courage of a hero who loves her:
- Although ancient artists presented it at the beginning completely dressed, the images of Andromeda naked began to appear during the classical Antiquity, and in the Renaissance the figure of Andromeda naked and chained, alone or being rescued, had become the standard, as seen in the works of Tiziano, Joachim Wtewael, Cesari, Bartolomeo Passerotti, Paolo Veronese
- Instead of stopping in the physical beauty of Andromeda, artists such as Rembrandt, Domenico Fetti, Théodore Chassériau, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Doré, Frederic Leighton, and satirically Félix Vallotton, have focused on their terror and vulnerability while waiting for the monster.
- Some artists, such as Piero di Cosimo, Jan Keynooghe, Jacob Matham and Pierre Mignard, have shown Andromeda in relation to their parents and viewers.
Andromeda was a popular subject for many artists, especially in the Renaissance and Baroque eras, followed by a revival of interest in its myth in the 18th century XIX, but interest in it has since declined.
In music
- Claudio Monteverdi, Andromeda (1618-1620), opera; the libretto exists but the music has been lost
- Jean-Baptiste Lully, Persée (1682), tragédie lyrique in 5 acts
- Georg Philipp Telemann, Perseus und Andromeda (1704), opera in 3 acts
- Antonio Maria Bononcini, Andromeda (1707), singing for 4 voices and orchestra
- Andromeda liberata (1726), a pasticcio-serenata on the theme of Perseus liberating Andromeda, realized as a collective tribute to the visitor Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni for at least five composers working in Venice, including Vivaldi
- Louis Antoine Lefebvre, Andromède (1762), sing for solo and orchestra.
- Giovanni Piasiello, Andromeda (1773), opera in three acts
- Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Symphony in FaThe ransom of Andromeda by Perseusand Symphony in Re (The petrification of Fineo and his friends), numbers 4 and 5 of their Symphonies on Ovid Metamorphosis (about 1781)
- Augusta Holmès, Andromède (1883), symphonic poem
- Guillaume Lekeu, Andromède (1891), singing for 4 voices, choir and orchestra
- Cyril Rootham, Andromeda (1905), a musical setting of Charles Kingsley's poem Andromeda
- Jacques Ibert, Persée et Andromède, ou le Plus heureux des trois (1929), opera in 2 acts
- Salvatore Sciarrino, Perseo e Andromeda (1990), opera in an act for 4 voices and synthesized sound
- Caroline Mallonée, Portraits of Andromeda for cello and string orchestra (2019)
- Ensiferum (2020)
- Charles Ans, Andromeda, Disco Sui Géneris (2018)
- José Antonio Bottiroli, Andromeda Micropena I en re menor B96 for piano (1984)
- Wos, Andrómeda, Single (2018), Dreaming of Andrómeda Enigma
- Gorillaz, Andromeda, Humanz (2017)
- Funzo and Baby Loud, Andromeda, Single (2020)
At the movies
- 1981, Furia de titanes. Judi Bowker (n. 1954) interprets the character of Andromeda.
- 2010, Furia de titanes: Remake from the previous one. Andromeda's character is played by Alexa Davalos. In this movie, Perseus saves Andromeda, but espouses Io.
- 2012, Ira de Titanes: sequel to the previous one. Andromeda's character is played by Rosamund Pike. In this version, Andromeda is a warrior queen that helps Perseus against the Titans and in the end Perseo reveals that he is in love with her.
- 2020, "The Old Guard", takes place in a context of action mixed between the art of modern war and mythology brushstrokes.