#theiliad

⚡COMING TO KICKSTARTER IN 2027⚡ 📜Lockettopia: The Trojan War Cycle📜

When King Peleus discovers his sea nymph wife Thetis secretly laying their infant son in a magic fire to burn away his mortal half, he intervenes, and the furious Thetis abandons husband and child, retreating to the sea. A young boy named Patroclus arrives at Peleus's court after accidentally killing a companion in a game of knucklebones, and the two boys become inseparable brothers in all but blood. Recognizing that his son carries a divine legacy to uphold, Peleus delivers both boys into the hands of the centaur Chiron on Mount Pelion, the great mentor who raised Heracles, Jason, and Asclepius before them. Under Chiron, the boy is renamed Achilles and raised on the meat of lions and bears, trained in strategy, medicine, and combat, forging one of the greatest warriors the Greek world has ever known.

To view the art piece larger- Journey now over to Lockettopia.com

The Trojan War Cycle brings together The Iliad, The Odyssey, and surviving poem fragments of the Epic Cycle: The Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliou Persis, Nostoi, and Telegony, to reconstruct the full myth in sweeping, chronological order.

Hector's death

"Who on earth could blame them? Ah, no wonderthe men of Troy and Argives under arms have sufferedyears of agony all for her, for such a woman.Beauty, terrible beauty!deathless goddess – so she strikes our eyes!"

Black and white sketch as the main conception of Helen.

Some closeups of the final piece

What we actually know of Helen's appearence according classic works is pretty vague. Homer describes her as white-armed (so obviouly a fair sking is correct), lovely-haired and long-dressed.

But on a surviving fragment of a poem written by Sappho, Helen's hair is described as Xanthe (a tone anywhere between blonde, light brown or reddish). And in other lyric poems stays she has gleaming blue eyes.

References

I know the dressing with this kind of makeup and hairstyle are't pretty accurate and some reinterpretations of Helen are portraying her with the minoan but I really wanted to incorporate somewhere the swan brooch (in reference of her birth from an egg as daughter of swan-transformed Zeus and Leda).

Helen's expression, incredibly expressive and vulnerable, was done as if she were looking at something that moved or pained her. She doesn't fall into the typical "femme fatale" frame, but rather humanizes her. The ritual red marks already feel like part of her iconography to evoke the sacred or even sacrificial aspect that mythology attributes to her (the woman for whom a war was fought).

Achilles wished all Greeks would die, so that he and Patroclus could conquer Troy alone… it took divine intervention to bring them down

(Reupload cause the links were wonky!!)

Prints here: etsy.com/shop/oliviabrett21