A Journey among Myths, Heroes and Divinities
The word “myth” is today primarily used in a negative or dubious sense: the myth of well-being, the myth of virility, the myth of efficiency… When we use the word “myth”, we most often mean “exaggeration”, an artfully constructed or ingenuously celebrated image. Originally, on the other hand, “myth” stood for the truth. Human beings used myth to pass on the stories of what had happened in their world, modifying them each time, elaborating them in the telling, but reporting events that had actually happened. The characters in myths are poetic inventions to represent reality.
Leading 20th-century scholars, Mircea Elide in particular, showed that each civilisation is based on myths, from the Indo-European to the African, from Mongolia to the Bushmen. Before that, until the 18th century, Occidentals considered only Greek mythology, later translated into new forms by the Romans. This is certainly true: Greek civilisation had created monuments, from the Parthenon to Phydias’ sculptures, from Homer’s poems to the tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The Romans continued the process with their extraordinary poets, who passed on the myths: Virgil, Ovid, Propertius, and all the other greats of the Age of Augustus.
Pirelli Calendar 2011: the Cast
- Images 1-2: HERA – Julianne Moore
- ZEUS – Brad Kroenig
- PENTHESILEA – Daria Werbowy
- AURORA – Heidi Mount
- AURORA – Heidi Mount
- APOLLO – Freja Beha Erichsen
- APOLLO – Freja Beha Erichsen
- THE NYMPH ECHO – Abbey Lee Kershaw
- THE NYMPH ECHO – Abbey Lee Kershaw
- ATHENA – Magdalena Frackowiak
- THREE BACCHANTES – Erin Wasson, Bianca Balti, Lakshmi Menon
- BACCHANTE – Bianca Balti
- BACCHUS AND TWO BACCHANTES – Garrett Neff, Isabeli Fontana, Bianca Balti
- FLORA – Elisa Sednaoui
- CASTOR AND POLLUX – Abbey Lee Kershaw, Freja Beha Erichsen
- NARCISSUS AND THE NYMPH ECHO – Elisa Sednaoui, Baptiste Giabiconi
- ATHENA – Iris Strubegger
- ATHENA – Iris Strubegger
- ACHILLES – Jake Davies
- ESTIA – Magdalena Frackowiak
- ESTIA – Magdalena Frackowiak
- AJAX – Erin Wasson
- MELPOMENE – Natasha Poly
- HADES – Jeneil Williams
- ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE – Freja Beha Erichsen, Abbey Lee Kershaw
- TERPSICHORE – Anja Rubik
- AMPHITRITE – Heidi Mount
- AMPHITRITE – Heidi Mount
- APOLLO – Baptiste Giabiconi
- APOLLO – Baptiste Giabiconi
- APHRODITE – Lara Stone
- APHRODITE AND MARS – Lara Stone, Sébastien Jondeau
- ARTEMIS – Daria Werbowy
- HERMES – Anja Rubik
- HERMES – Anja Rubik
This was an undoubtedly unique heritage but, after a fertile and creative period (Italian painting in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, and the great era of poetry), Greek mythology became a kind of repertoire of embalmed and fossilised divinities and images, to be accepted and replicated uncritically or simply rejected as a whole. Reconnecting with mythology, in this case classical mythology, means, on the other hand, understanding, through its memorable characters and genres, the meaning of a civilisation. It involves understanding how much of what we consider to be universal and timeless it was able to transmit to us. Because the essence of myth goes beyond time and space, even though it is expressive of each civilisation in specific ways. It is universal and beyond time.
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