Pandora (painting)

Pandora is a painting by the English artist John William WaterhouseEnglish artist known primarily for his depictions of women set in scenes from myth, legend or poetry. He is the best known of that group of artists who from the 1880s revived the literary themes favoured by the Pre-Raphaelites. (1849–1917). Completed in 1886, like many of Waterhouses’s later works, the picture contains only a single – almost invariably female – figure, the eponymous Pandora.^[1]

According to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first mortal woman, fashioned out of clay by the god Hephaistos. She was sent to Earth with a box,^[a]Early versions of the story of Pandora say a jar, (πίθος pithos). In his Latin account of the story, the 16th-century humanist Erasmus mistranslated the Greek pithos as pyxis, which means “box”.^[2] and curious to know what was inside she opened it, releasing all of the evils that have since then plagued humanity: work, conflict, disease … only hope remained in the box.^[3]

Pandora is depicted as a pale-skinned young woman, kneeling at the moment of opening the box, which is sitting on a stone pedestal in front of her. She is wearing a long, translucent blue dress with gold patterned detailing around the hem and the slipping neckline, eliciting an impression of purity and vulnerability.

Pandora was sold at auction in London in 1990 for £231,000.^[4]