Athena Leaping Through Fire and Stone — Print & Oil Painting

A dark bloom of fire and flying rock occupies the centre of the square, and it has been painted like a bruise: brown and umber at the edges, a hot orange core, blocks of masonry thrown out of it in every direction and already softening into smoke. That explosion is the light source for the whole canvas.

Across the front of it a woman is caught in mid-leap, both feet off the rocks, spear held high in the right hand with the butt swung forward for balance. The white chiton is dragged by the movement and blown out to the left as one broad sail of cloth, the largest and brightest shape in the picture.

Her equipment does the identifying. A crested helmet with a red horsehair plume, a gold cuirass moulded to the torso with a face embossed on the chest, laced boots to the calf. Greek art gives Athena the crest, the spear and the aegis, the goatskin that carried the Gorgon's head, and the relief here is a face without the snakes, echoing the idea rather than copying it.

The colour range is unexpectedly quiet for a subject this violent: grey-cream smoke, pale stone, gold, one red accent at the crest with another at the knee. Contrast is kept low so the eye reads the shapes before it reads the drama.

It sits in our Ancient Greece collection. For the same goddess at rest, attributes laid out rather than in use, see the standing portrait with the owl.