Pallas and Envy by Picart
Athena and Envy
Pallas and Envy. Picart et al., 1673-1733.
Metamorphoses Bk II: 760-786.
Caption: «THE ARGUMENT. Pallas commands Envy to make Aglauros jealous of her Sifter Hersé. Envy obeys the Goddess; and Aglauros, stung with that furious Passion, continues obstinate in opposing Mercury's Passage to her Sifter's Appartment, for which the God changes her into a Statue.»
- This illustration created by Bernard Picart and his contemporaries for Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book II, lines 760–786) visually translates the dramatic encounter where Pallas Athena commands Envy to poison Aglauros with jealousy toward her sister Hersé. Designed for the famous 18th-century engraved editions of Ovid, the work captures the striking narrative progression: Athena’s divine mandate, Envy’s malignant obedience, Aglauros’s bitter obstruction of Mercury, and her ultimate transformation into a lifeless stone statue. The print masterfully contrasts the celestial radiance of the goddess of wisdom against the murky, serpentine squalor of Envy's dwelling, emphasizing how corruptive passions warp the human form and spirit.
- Beyond its narrative role, the engraving holds profound symbolic and spiritual resonance regarding moral decay and spiritual calcification. Symbolically, Aglauros’s petrification into a cold statue reflects the hardening of a soul consumed by envy—showing how jealousy paralyzes reason, destroys empathy, and turns a living human heart into stone. Spiritually, the work serves as a cautionary allegory on the inevitability of divine justice: when individuals yield to malice and greed rather than wisdom, their self-inflicted spiritual corruption becomes the very mechanism of their downfall, locking them into a state of permanent spiritual death.
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