History of art - 'What was the appeal of classical mytholoy for Essay

History of art - 'What was the appeal of classical mytholoy for artists and patrons' - Essay Example This is the reason of their ‘survival’ until today and of their ‘validity’ with the meaning of the absence of any opposition to their content. Although mythology has been used mostly as source of knowledge and creation, there have been times (and still exist) when the past is used in order to help the achievement of certain ‘aims’ of the present. A view held in the theory is that ‘historians, literary critics and art historians who write about past cultures, often use these cultures for present purposes’ in order to achieve specific purposes (Landauer, C., 1994). Mythology, especially that of Greece and the ‘Roman Empire’ has been a very important resource for a numerous of artists who tried to ‘present’ the stories included in the myths in a variety of works of art, mostly in paintings, sculpture and ornaments. Among the artists that have been influenced from the myths of the ancient Greece are Picasso and Botticceli. The paintings of the first of them, Picasso, contained an extended reference to the myth of Minotaures1. We could refer to the ‘Minotaures and the dead horse in front of the cave’, the ‘war of the Minotaures’ and the ‘Minotaures killed by a sword’. On the other hand, Botticceli tended to refer to the gods of the Greek Mythology. His most famous painting of such kind is the ‘Birth of Aphrodite’ which can be found in Florence and also the ‘Aphrodite and Mars’ in the National Gallery of London. Although the above mentioned painters are known for their preference to the myths and the legends of the ancient cultures (especially those of Rome and Greece), there are also a numerous others who tend to refer to the facts and mostly the myths of these periods of time as for the theme of their works of art. The common element between all the artists that use elements of the Greek and the Roman Mythology is that they approach the subject of the reference from different