Prometheus (2023) Original Oil Painting by Nicolas Maureau

A body waiting for a wound that hasn't opened yet: Prometheus, from the Melancholy series, gives Nicolas Maureau's interpretation of Prometheus in Chains, the myth of a titan condemned to be devoured daily by a vulture for handing fire, and with it knowledge, to men.

The series as a whole is less about the dramatic moment than about what happens inside a body before or after one, and Prometheus fits that logic exactly. Punishment here isn't shown as spectacle but as something endured privately, over and over, a wound that renews itself just as the body starts to heal.

What Maureau paints isn't the myth's violence so much as its patience, the long interior time of a punishment that never quite ends and never quite begins again, always suspended somewhere between the two.

Materials used:

oil painting

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 130 x 97 x 2cm (unframed) / 130 x 97cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Photorealistic
• Subject: People and portraits