01 Work, Interpretations of Olympian deities, THE ART OF WAR, Arturo Michelena's Penthesilea, with footnotes #50

Arturo Michelena

Penthesilea

Oil on canvas

436 x 648cm

Instituto Autonomo Circulo Militar de las Fuerzas Armadas, Caracas

Penthesilea, daughter of Ares and Otrera, was an Amazon queen who fought and died in the Trojan War. After Hector, the leader of the Trojan army, was killed in the final year of the war, Penthesilea arrived with a small but highly skilled troop of Amazon warriors to help the doomed city against the Greeks. Penthesilea slew many Greeks before being killed in turn by Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors at Troy. But when Achilles stripped Penthesilea of her armor and beheld her beauty, he fell in love with the fallen queen. More on Penthesilea

Francisco Arturo Michelena Castillo was born on June 16, 1863 in Valencia, Venezuela. He was the son of the painter Juan Antonio Michelena, who would become his teacher. Between 1869 and 1871, he studied at the Lisandro Ramírez School in Valencia, and later at the Colegio Cajigal whose director was Alejo Zuloaga, the future rector of the University of Valencia. Between 1874 and 1877, Michelena received his first drawing lessons from his father. He produced portraits, drawings of horses and his first self-portrait. He traveled to Caracas and met the writer Francisco de Sales Pérez, his mentor and patron. In 1879 Michelena and his father opened a painting school in Valencias. In 1883 he took part in the Great National Exhibition of Venezuela to commemorate the Centennial of the Birth of Simón Bolívar producing two works: Alegoría de la República regenerada (Allegory of the Regenerated Republic) and La entrega de la bandera invencible de Numancia al batallón sin nombre (Surrender of the Invincible Flag of Numancia to the Nameless Batallion). In 1885 he received a scholarship to study in Europe and left for Paris. Enrolling in the Académie Julian training with the painter Jean-Paul Laurens, who specialized in historical painting and would exert a great influence on the work of Michelena and his fellow students Emilio Boggio and Cristóbal Rojas. Although he returned from Europe for a short time in 1890, he moved permanently to Venezuela in 1893 and shortly after, painted his best known work, Miranda en la Carraca (Miranda in La Carraca) in 1897. He died in Caracas from tuberculosis at the age of 35. More on Arturo Michelena

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