10/19/2022
As Halloween approaches we’re highlighting a selection of the spookier aspects of the Lightner Museum collection. George Hitchcock’s impressive painting, The Return of Persephone, is on display in our Ballroom Gallery. This grandly scaled painting depicts Persephone, daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Ethereal and beautiful, Hitchcock’s light-filled painting of Persephone obscures the goddesses’ dark story.
Hades, god of the dead and king of the underworld is intent on making Persephone his wife. So much so, that one day while Persephone is picking flowers in a field he abducts her before anyone can notice that she is gone. When Demeter finds out that her daughter has been captured by Hades she becomes angry, neglecting her duties as goddess of the harvest, and leaving the world frozen in perpetual winter.
Zeus decides that Persephone must return to earth to end the suffering that is inflicted by Demeter’s rage. When Hades finds out about this agreement he feeds Persephone seeds from a pomegranate, the fruit of the underworld, making anyone who tastes them want to return back to his land. Demeter becomes enraged once again, accusing Hades of tricking Persephone into making her stay with him.
The fight between Demeter and Hades ends when Zeus decides that Persephone will spend half of the year on earth with her mother, and the other half of the year in the underworld with Hades. Each time Persephone emerges from the underworld, the earth “blooms” representing the beginning of springtime, and when she returns to the underworld Demeter’s anger causes the fall and winter seasons – making Persephone both the goddess of spring and the queen of the underworld.
