Pallas and the Centaur: painting by Botticelli

Photo: Pallas and the Centaur, a painting by Botticelli

Pallas et le Centaure (Pallas and the Centaur, 1482), a painting by the Italian Renaissance period painter Sandro Botticelli, is preserved in the Uffizi of Florence, Italy. The painting's bare landscape focuses one's gaze on two figures. First, a centaur has trespassed on the forbidden territory. This lusty being, half horse and half man, is being brought under control by a guard-nymph armed with a shield and halberd, and she has grabbed him by the hair. The woman has been identified both as the goddess Pallas Athena and the Amazon Camilla, chaste heroine of Virgil's Aeneid. The two aspects of the human soul, reason and instinct fighting one another, are represented by the double nature of the centaur. The latter, whose classical epithet is Chiron, was perhaps inspired by a classic relief, though the pathetic expression is wholly by Botticelli.