The Mirror of the Gods: How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods

The final chapter analyzes the selection pattern, attributing it to individual choices of patrons interested in astrology, and hence planetary deities, and in subject matter involving amorous encounters or exotic animals. Bull contends that mythological visual imagery appeared mostly in what he characterizes as secondary locations: domestic furnishings such as marriage chests, majolica, birth trays, and small boxes for jewelry and other precious objects, temporary decorations for festivals or triumphal entries, prints, and sculptures for fountains and gardens. In addition to enjoying the Olympian perspective Bull's range provides, readers will profit from the separate analyses of the six pagan deities most favored in European iconography ca. 1400-1700 and the summaries by their myths' literary sources.