The escaping virtues, for example, emphasize the classical beauty presented with the new techniques such as sfumato to tell a story about the beauty of human and divine. Their depictions are inspired by great Greek and Roman classical works. No matter what type of art there was, the “content of the box”, the “gifts” are depicted as humans. The writers Andrea Alciato and Gabriele Faerno emphasized that Hope only remained. One version also says Epimetheus, “the foolish man”, opened the jar and let the “gifts of the gods” escape. Therefore, during the Renaissance there were alternative versions of the box containing virtues and blessings. That fact made the artists question the mystery of Pandora’s box. Sickness, famine, war, death and other evils aren’t beautiful. Being divine and mysterious made a man more beautiful. The artists expressed strong interest in individual experience and humanizing the divine. Rebirth after the Middle Agesįollowing the Middle Ages, the Renaissance was the era of rebirth of humanity. Pandora’s jar or pithos became a “box” for the first time in the 16th century when Erasmus, a humanist who wrote a Latin version of the Pandora’s story, mistranslated pithos as pyxis which means a “box”. In Ancient Greece pithos was a large jar usually containing wine, oil or grain. Many people open “Pandora’s box” also today, starting something that causes many problems that cannot be controlled any longer.Ī pithos from Crete, c. Shortly, this is how the idiom “to open Pandora’s box” is created. Very soon after, she got the jar in her care and opened it, releasing all the evils into the world. When Pandora opened the box a plague dispersed and doomed humanity to suffer ruin, insanity. So, he met Pandora, “she who sends up gifts”, with Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus. There are two versions of the legend of Pandoras Box. She Who Sends Up GiftsĪccording to myth, when Prometheus stole the fire from heaven, Zeus was furious and he wanted to take revenge. It became an object of interest for artists of Renaissance and an excellent example of interaction of something human and something divine. The bad voice of Pandora continued into the Renaissance, but the jar or pithos from the ancient times became a mysterious box. The myth of Pandora’s notorious box is one of the ancient answers why there is evil in this world. Once upon a time a woman of unique gifts opened a jar and released all the evils on humanity. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Pandora, 1871 (Wikimedia, Public Domain)
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