Majestic Poseidon Greek God — Print & Oil Painting

The subject is a statue and not a god, and the picture keeps that distinction carefully. Half a dozen human figures in pale robes stand around the plinth, none of them taller than the marble ankles, while the dome above fills with a grey haze of light falling from an opening somewhere overhead.

The hall is enormous and only half described. Arched openings run around the drum, columns disappear into shadow at both edges, and a dark doorway on the right leads out of the frame. Everything is built from long soft gradients of grey, the saturation so low that the only colour information left is the difference between warm stone and cold air.

The figure stands with the arms folded high across the chest, the head turned aside under a spiked crown, a heavy beard falling to the collarbone and a length of drapery gathered at hip and thigh. Behind his right leg a big cat is carved in a darker stone with its head low, and at his shoulder a trident stands upright, as tall as he is.

That trident is the one firm identification. It is Poseidon's attribute in Greek art from the archaic period onward, the fork with which he raises storms and shakes the ground, and it does work here that no facial type could. He was god of the sea and of earthquakes both, and the Greeks called him the earth-shaker for the second reason as often as the first.

It stands in our Ancient Greece collection. Everything this piece withholds is delivered by the wave painting, where the same god appears in colour, in motion and outdoors.