Artistic Analysis

The loss of agency for Atalanta is an important theme in the story, as it shows the subtle sexist nature of the writing. Even after Atatalanta’s unjust transformation Venus, whose words are written by a man, finds a way to blame her in the story. Atalanta begins her story doing what she loves and ends it as a lion being criticized by a hateful God. Reading into the transformation into a lion can also be interpreted as more sexism. Hippomenes has to do an evil to be considered wild while, in reference to Venus calling women uncivilized, Atalanta simply exists. The transformation of Atalanta is often overlooked in art, so it was very difficult to find an interpretation of it. The race takes precedence for some reason, which I think is unfortunate as it doesn’t display the same level of meaning as does the transformation. While this art piece by Crispijn de Passe the Elder is fairly literal and doesn’t play into a lot of meaning, there are still some subtle things to notice. The most important being the way the two lions are drawn. I was admittedly forced to make an assumption in my analysis of which lion is which character and interpreted that the lion closer to us is Atalanta whereas the lion furthest is Hippomenes. An obvious difference is the size, Atalanta, while still having a mane, is significantly smaller than Hippomenes. This detail is present despite Atalanta obviously being physically stronger than Hippomenes, as he had to cheat to beat her. He is bigger solely because he is a man and this is a common thing in the piece and the story. A common sexist reading overlooks Atalanta’s true strength and how she should be absolved from blame. Her womanhood causes a lot of the blame she receives. We see more subtle sexist aspects in the piece in how Hippomenes looks at Atalanta. He looks in anger towards her while she looks away from him. This is a metaphor for the entire story if we treat Hippomenes as the story and Atalanta as herself with the story constantly blaming her for things she didn’t care about or had no part in. In contrast to this, we can look at the piece in a way where Atalanta is the bigger lion and Hippomenes is the smaller lion. Despite this likely giving Crispijn de Passe the Elder far too much credit in his social views. It could be a much more progressive piece with Atalanta justifiably enraged at a weak but cunning Hippomenes.