Prometheus Bound (Thomas Cole)
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| Prometheus Bound | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Thomas Cole |
| Year | 1847 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 160 cm × 240 cm (64 in × 96 in) |
| Location | Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California |
Prometheus Bound is an 1847 oil painting by American artist Thomas Cole. Prometheus Bound is one of Cole's largest paintings, and like his other major works of the 1840s it was not the result of a commission. It draws from the ancient Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. In the painting, Prometheus is chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus in Scythia. Zeus has punished him for endowing humans with life, knowledge, and specifically for giving humans fire. Each day a raptor comes to feed on Prometheus's liver, which regrows between visits, making Zeus's punishment even more cruel.
The allegorical painting is among Cole's last works, but Cole never commented on the theme of the work. Art historians have tentatively linked the bondage of Prometheus to abolitionist sentiment by reviewing the presentation of the mythical figure in contemporaneous literature. Cole sent it to London for an 1847 exhibit and competition to decorate the Houses of Parliament, and the painting was still in London when he died. It thus received little exhibition in the United States in the 1840s, making its reception (and its theme) difficult to judge.
Cole was a landscape painter who often employed allegory in his works, such as The Titan's Goblet and The Voyage of Life. The story of Prometheus strictly belongs to the genre of history painting. In Prometheus Bound, the landscape is appropriately desolate; above Prometheus are imposing, snowy mountains and a cold sky. The figure himself blends in with the rocks, a conscious decision of the artist that adds an element of surprise for the viewer when the figure is finally seen; the viewer's surprise emphasizes Prometheus's desperate and desolate situation.[1] Upon further inspection a vulture is seen lower in the painting, swooping up toward Prometheus. The raptor comes at dawn, when the planet Jupiter (the "morning star") is seen in the sky.[2] As the Roman god Jupiter is the equivalent of Zeus, Prometheus's antagonist symbolically watches over him.
Technically, the rendition of light on snow is very skilled; Cole used a red underpaint with white to render the mountains. The famous American landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church wrote in 1876 to Cole's son, "I've always admired greatly the sky of that picture, deeming it the finest morning effect I ever saw painted".[3]
Interpretation
There is no record of Cole commenting on the theme of Prometheus Bound. Art historian Patricia Junker notes that writers and artists often took up the myth of Prometheus in the decades before Cole's painting; they include Lord Byron, James Gates Percival, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, James Russell Lowell, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Prometheus in bondage was seen as having an "indomitable spirit" and could "serve as a potent object lesson for political and social reform".[4] Thoreau had recently translated Aeschylus's play, noting in his forward the increasing interest in Prometheus. Percival published an anti-slavery poem called "Prometheus" in 1843, a time when slavery and abolitionism were controversial topics in the U.S. It is possible that Cole used the bondage of Prometheus as a comment on slavery, as he saw art as a potential moral influence on society.[5]