Pygmalion

Pygmalion is a figure from Cyprus mythology. Although Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, it is more familiar from Ovid's The Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion is portrayed as a sculptor in love with a statue he had made himself..

History

Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, searched for a long time for a woman to marry. But on one condition: she had to be the perfect woman. Frustrated in his search for her, he decided not to marry and spend time creating precious sculptures to make up for her absence. One of these, Galatea, was so beautiful that Pygmalion fell in love with the statue.

Through the intervention of Aphrodite, Pygmalion dreamed that Galatea came to life. In the work The Metamorphoses, by Ovid, the myth is recounted as follows:

Pigmalion went to the statue and, as he touched it, it seemed to him that he was warm, that the ivory softened and that, deposing his hardness, he blinded his fingers gently, as the hill of Mount Himeto softens the rays of the Sun and lets himself handle with his fingers, taking several figures and making himself more docile and soft with the handling. In seeing him, Pigmalion is filled with a great joy mixed with fear, believing that he was deceived. He played the statue again and made sure it was a flexible body and that the veins gave their pulsations by exploring them with his fingers.

Upon awakening, Pygmalion met Aphrodite, who, moved by the king's wish, told him: you deserve happiness, a happiness that you yourself have embodied. Here's a queen you've been looking for. She loves her and defends her from evil ». And that was how Galatea became human.

The myth of Pygmalion in culture

Pygmalionof Angelo Bronzino (1530).

PygmalionJean-Baptiste Regnault of 1786, National Museum of the Palace of Versailles.

The basic story of Pygmalion has been widely transmitted and represented in the arts through the centuries. At an unknown date, later authors give this name to the statue of the sea nymph Galatea. Goethe calls her Elise, based on the variants in the Dido/Elisa story.

A variation on this theme can also be seen in the story of Pinocchio, in which a wooden puppet is transformed into a real boy, although in this case the puppet possesses sentience prior to its release. transformation; it is the puppet who implores the miracle and not its creator, the woodcarver Geppetto.

In the final scene of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale a statue of Queen Hermione comes to life and manifests as Hermione herself, bringing the play to a reconciled conclusion.

In George Bernard Shaw's play Pigmalion, which is a modern take on the myth with a subtle hint of feminism, lower-class florist Eliza Doolittle is practically 'revived' 3. 4; by a phonetics teacher, Henry Higgins, who teaches her to perfect her accent and conversation in social situations. The Frankenstein monster story is also a reference to Pygmalion.

This myth is referenced, through a play on words, in the title of the episode Pigmoelion, belonging to the eleventh season of the television series The Simpsons. In this chapter, Moe undergoes facial cosmetic surgery, to change his face and get one more adjusted to the canons of beauty, which makes him get a job as an actor in soap operas.

The story has been the subject of notable paintings by Agnolo Bronzino, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Honoré Daumier, Edward Burne-Jones (four major works from 1868-1870, later again in large versions from 1875-1878 under the title ofPygmalion and the statue), Auguste Rodin, Ernest Normand, Paul Delvaux, Francisco de Goya, Franz von Stuck, François Boucher and Thomas Rowlandson, among others. Numerous "awakening" sculptures have also been produced.

First American Serialized Publishing Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw, November 1914.