Contest Winner!

Congratulations to Simon from Great Britain who correctly identified the image I posted on June 4.  The detail, showing part of a coral-colored gown and a snakeskin wrap, was from John William Waterhouse's Lamia of 1909.

In traditional Greek myth, Lamia was a queen of Libya who had an affair with Zeus, and bore his children.  Zeus' wife, Hera, upon discovering the affair, kills Lamia's children, driving the aggrieved woman insane.  In her madness, Lamia begins abducting and devouring the children of other women.  

Over time, the myth altered, and Lamia came to be considered a succubus, seducing young men and feeding on their blood.  According to some versions of the story, Lamia's evil deeds and/or grief distorted her features, making her a hideous monster, often portrayed with serpent-like features.

Waterhouse's 1909 Lamia, however, is most likely based upon John Keats' poem of the same name from nearly a century earlier.  Keats' Lamia, though still a daemon, is more sympathetic.  She seduces a young man, Menippus Lycius, and convinces him to stay with her, and eventually to marry.  They are happy together, until the philosopher Apollonius, a guest at the wedding, discovers Lamia's true identity as a serpent, upon which the illusion is broken, and Lamia, her house, and her belongings all disappear.  With the death of Lamia, Lycius too dies, bringing this sad, romantic tale of this beguiling phantasm to an end.

This was not Waterhouse's only exploration of the tale of Lamia.  In 1905, he painted another version in which a beautiful, supplicant Lamia kneels before an Arthurian Lycius.  Evidence also indicates that the surviving painting from 1909, is actually a reduction of the much-larger original.  In all, it is supposed Waterhouse visited the Lamia myth no fewer than six times.

Waterhouse was not alone in his interest in the motif of this particular femme-fatale.  In 1909, Herbert Draper, Waterhouse's former student, also exhibited a painting entitled Lamia, though Draper chose to portray the daemon with the serpentine features alluded to in earlier versions of the myth.

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Make sure you check out Simon's blog, The Hidden Place.  It is a wonderful resource for introductions to many of today's most talented working artists.