Fall of Phaeton 1600 - 1700

This is an anonymous drawing of the Fall of Phaeton, made with pen and brown ink, with brown wash over black chalk on paper. The subject is drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Phaeton, son of the sun god, asks to drive his father's chariot across the sky but loses control, scorching the earth before Zeus strikes him down with a thunderbolt. It is a story about hubris, of course, but in this period, images of Phaeton's fall often served as warnings against reckless ambition and challenges to divine or established order. Drawings like this were produced in workshops or academies, as part of a long process of training artists and designers. They would have studied classical literature and mythology, and learned to represent the human body in dynamic poses, using light and shadow to create dramatic effects. These institutions played a key role in shaping artistic styles and maintaining social hierarchies. To fully understand this drawing, we might research the history of art academies, the influence of classical literature, and the social and political contexts in which such images circulated.