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Ivanov Alexander Andreevich (1806 - 1858)
Apollo, Hyacinthus and Cyparissus Singing and Playing
Oil on canvas, 1831—1834
100 õ 139 cm
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
The lessons of classical Greek art, which Ivanov so deeply imbibed, are palpably manifest in the painting Apollo, Hyacinthus and Cypress Singing and Playing (1831—1834). The young Hyacinthus is playing the flute, Cypress is drowsing, while Apollo, as the supreme representative of the Muses, is directing this wonderful action. The group is depicted against an open background pierced with the rays of the southern sun.
Apollo - In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo (in Greek, Ἀπόλλων—Apóllōn or Ἀπέλλων—Apellōn), is one of the most important and many-sided of the Olympian deities. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. Apollo was worshipped in both ancient Greek and Roman religion, as well as in the modern Hellenic neopaganism. Hyacinth is a divine hero from Greek mythology. His cult at Amyclae, where his tomb was located, at the feet of Apollo's statue, dates from the Mycenean era. Cyparissus - In Greek mythology, a myth set in Chios tells of Kyparissos (Greek: κυπάρισσος, "cypress") — or Cyparissus (Latin: cupressus, "cypress") — a young boy and son of Telephus. Though the mythic context and the setting is Hellenic, the subject is essentially known from Hellenizing Latin literature and Pompeiian frescoes.
Apollo gave the boy a tame deer as a companion, but Cyparissus accidentally killed it with a javelin as it lay asleep in the undergrowth. The gift of a hunter's prey is an initiatory gift in the sphere of the hunt, a supervised preparation for the manly arts of war and a testing ground for behavior (Koch-Harnack 1983). The tameness of the deer may be purely Ovidian. In a late reversal of the boy's traditional role, perhaps an interpretation applied by Ovid, Cyparissus asks Apollo to let his tears fall forever. Apollo turns the sad boy into a cypress tree, whose sap forms lets like tears on the trunk. Cypress was one of the trees Orpheus charmed.
No Greek hero cult devoted to Cyparissus has been identified.
According to a different tradition Cyparissus was the son of Orchomenus, the brother of Minyas, and the mythical founder of Kyparissos in Phocis, which later was called Anticyra.
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