Children of the Gods. Antique Heroes in Ancient and Modern Art
22 September 2009 - 28 March 2010
191 exhibits

22 September 2009, an exhibition Children of the Gods. Antique Heroes in Ancient and Modern Art from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum opened in the Hermitage-Kazan Exhibition Centre. The exhibition is devoted to the images of heroes of Ancient Hellas in Antiquity Art and their later transformation in Western European Art. The exhibition embraces a large period starting from the 7th century and up till the Early Modern Period and includes about 200 exhibits implementing various views and ideas of  heroes of Ancient Greek mythology, epic and cult.

Ancient Greek word hero came into many modern languages, though its meaning has changed with the course of time. In Homer’s epic heroes are noble warrior leaders distinguished for not only their valour but also for their nobility. Later in the Classical tradition heroes were mythological and epic characters who were of miraculous birth. In strict sense hero of the Classical mythology is a demigod, son of a human and a god. Mythical heroes are children of gods deprived of their divine gift, immortality. This fatal discrepancy was the reason of dramatic collisions described by antique writers and sung by poets and tragedians.

The first part of the exhibition is dedicated to Ancient Greek hero cults. Among the exhibited pieces there are inscriptions-dedications to Achilles revered in different regions of Ancient Hellas. A special role was played by Achilles cult in the Northern Black Sea region where he was worshipped as a chthonian deity.

The hero cult was closely connected with the hero’s sanctuary, heroon. According to the Ancient Greek beliefs in the tomb a hero gained special power that allowed him to exert significant influence on the life of his compatriots. In course of time even mortal humans began to be venerated as heroes after their death. Such heroised deceased humans depicted on grave steles appeared as lying on festive couches, sitting at sepulchral meals or riding a horse as victorious horsemen, warriors or hunters.

According to the myths one of the most important and most revered antique heroes, Heracles (Hercules), became immortal and joined Olympic gods. The image of the hero did not loose its fascination in Post-Antiquity Art and was endowed with various allegorical meanings in Medieval, Renaissance, baroque and Classical Art. A separate part of the exhibition is dedicated to Hercules because of monumentality and versatility of his image. He is presented at the exhibition also as an object of a cult by dedicatory reliefs and statuettes, and as a myth character on Attic painted vases of the 6th-5th centuries B.C., on engravings and canvases by artists of the Early Modern Period.

A special place in the Ancient Greek legendary tradition is occupied by the Trojan War sung by Homer. Its heroes personified for ancient Greeks an ideal of a valiant warrior who was fearless and ambitious. Monuments of Antiquity Art reproducing episodes of the Trojan War and images of its participants are numerous and diverse. At the exhibition these stories are represented by painted vases, reliefs made of marble and bronze, as well as by pictorial and graphic works created in the Early Modern Period.

An important part of the exhibition that includes works of the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period is dedicated to real historical personalities of the ancient time who traced their genealogy to gods and heroes and who were conferred heroic and divine honours. The first one among them was undoubtedly a Macedonian king Alexander the Great who was considered to be a paternal descendant of Hercules and, on maternal side, derived his origin from Achilles. Similarly a distinguished figure in Roman history, Gaius Julius Caesar, referred to himself as a descendant of an epic hero Aeneas, son of the goddess Venus (Aphrodite). Roman emperor Commodus who ruled at the end of the 2nd century A.D. proclaimed himself to be the Hercules himself. Later on some claimed kinship with heroes, for example, these were medieval French kings or Dukes of Burgundy at the end of the 15th century; this fact, in its turn, affected the reference to the images of classical mythology characters.

Having detached from their original prototypes heroes of Classical Antiquity turned into abstract allegories. Whether it was an ideal of a wise ruler, warrior or an honourable citizen, an antique hero who was to personify this ideal appeared in a role and image that were initially alien to him. Apparently, Achilles and Aeneas, carried over to the scope of courtly romance or classical tragedy, have little in common with heroes of Homer’s Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid who carry their names. Their images are, so to say, brought up to date and filled with new meaning unknown to the antiquity. Still they were not forgotten, but preserved their relevance to European culture over many centuries. Human by nature antique heroes, nevertheless, acquired immortality for ages, and this is what the exhibition is designed to demonstrate.