3-008-633 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: marble group by Flaxman - "The Fury of Athamas - Ino Endeavouring to Rescue her Children from Destruction by their Father", 1862. Colossal marble group depicting a scene from Ovid's "Metamorphoses". 'At command of Hera, Athamas married Nephele, by whom he became the father of Phryxus and Helle. But he was secretly in love with the mortal Ino...by whom he begot Learchus and Melicertes. Nephele, discovering that Ino had supplanted her in her husband's affections, disappeared in anger, and, returning to the gods, demanded that Athamas should be sacrificed as an atonement to her. Thenceforward misfortune and ruin fell on the house of Athamas. By the artifices of Ino, as well as his own infidelity, he drew on him the anger of Hera also. At last he was seized by madness, and in his frenzy he killed one of his sons, Learchus, and Ino threw herself with the other, Melicertes, into the sea. The action of every figure in Flaxman's group very finely realises the old Greek legend'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.