Death of the Centaur Nessus
7:00 AM
Luca Giordano, Death of the Centaur Nessus, 1692
My Master said: "Our answer
will we make
That will of thine
was evermore so hasty."
Then touched he me,
and said: "This one is Nessus,
Who perished for
the lovely Deianira,
And for himself,
himself did vengeance take.
- Inferno, Dante, Canto XII, Lines 66-71
As Dante clambers down into the
depths of hell guided by Virgil, he encounters a group of centaurs. These
mythical creatures—half man, half horse—maintain order in hell. At first they
seem hostile towards Dante and his mentor. However, after Virgil pulls his
pretty standard “sent by the all-powerful creator” routine, the centaurs
grudgingly oblige, and Chiron, a mentor of heroes from Greek mythology,
instructs Nessus to carry our hero to the next stage.
The lines above reference Nessus’s
unusual fate in Greek mythology. He, like so many unfortunate Greek villains,
dies at the hands of Hercules. He tries to kidnap Hercules’ wife, Deianira;
Hercules kills him with an arrow. In a brilliant stroke of treachery, Nessus uses
his dying breath to dupe Hercules’ wife into killing Hercules. Deianira has
recently become tired of Hercules’ cheating. Despite his marriage, Hercules has
used his classical celebrity to father children around the Greek world. Nessus
recognizes this pain in Deianira and proposes to her a cure for her husband’s
adultery. He tells her that a mixture of his blood and olive oil will ensure
that Hercules never cheats on her again. She fails to recognize the rather
blatant threat in those words and allows Nessus to wreak his revenge from the
grave. She puts the solution in a flask. In a later attempt to stop her husband’s
philandering she applies the mixture to Hercules’ clothing. It burns the strongman's skin. Badly... as in so badly that he actually throws himself into a pit of flame
just to stop it from burning. He dies.
In Death of the Centaur Nessus,’the poor monster lies pathetically as he bleeds from an arrow to his heart. He
clutches Deianira, who looks down pityingly. Hercules rages in the background;
he appears far more brutal and wild than the centaur. His wild and untamed appearance
parallels his promiscuity. The top of the rocks in the middle ground bisects
the painting horizontally. Nessus seems quite convincing, especially
considering he just kidnapped Deianira. His bald-faced treachery allows Nessus to rise
above his centaur friends and enter the upper echelon of cool Greek guys.
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