The Robust God Devouring His Fragile Son

Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (in the title Romanised to Saturn), who, fearing that his children would overthrow him, ate each one upon their birth. It is one of the series of Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823.

Goya depicts Saturn feasting upon one of his sons. His child's head and part of the left arm has already been consumed. The right arm has probably been eaten too, though it could be folded in front of the body and held in place by Saturn's crushing grip. The god is on the point of taking another bite from the left arm; as he looms from the darkness, his mouth gapes and his eyes bulge white with the appearance of madness. The only other brightness in the picture comes from the white flesh and red blood of the corpse and the white knuckles of Saturn as he digs his fingers into the back of the body.

Francisco Goya
1819–1823 Oil mural transferred to canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saturno_devorando_a_sus_hijos.jpg

Goya may have been inspired by Peter Paul Rubens' 1636 picture of the same name. Rubens' painting, also held at the Museo del Prado, is a brighter, more conventional treatment of the myth: his Saturn exhibits less of the cannibalistic ferocity portrayed in Goya's rendition. However, some critics^[who?] have suggested that Rubens' portrayal is the more horrific: the god is portrayed as a calculating remorseless killer, who – fearing for his own position of power – murders his innocent child. Goya's vision, on the other hand, shows a man driven mad by the act of killing his own son. In addition, the body of the son in Goya's picture is that of an adult, not the helpless baby depicted by Rubens.

Peter Paul Rubens
Saturn, Jupiter's father, devours one of his sons, Poseidon 1636 Oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son

This is yet another example of how Mythology becomes an inspitarion of art. In both of this paintings the artists show the fragility of the life in the hands of the god while he savagely devors his son. In both paintings the god is portrayed as strong and robust, while the rapresentation of the son varies alot from one painting to the other. In Goya's painting he shows only his life less body,  while in Ruben's painting he shows the excruciating pain in the fragile baby's face.

David and Goliath

The Israelites are facing the Philistines in the Valley of Elah. The boy David is bringing food to his older brothers who are with King Saul. He hears the Philistine giant Goliath challenging the Israelites to send their own champion to decide the outcome in single combat. David tells Saul he is prepared to face Goliath and Saul allows him to make the attempt. He is victorious, striking Goliath in the forehead with a stone from his sling, and the Philistines flee in terror. Saul sends to know the name of the young champion, and David tells him that he is the son of Jesse.

Davide con la testa di Golia, Caravaggio 1610

The physical fragility is represented by David in comparison to the gigantic Goliath.   But eventhough he is smaller, he is actually the winner of this scene.
Among the two of them, David personifies in a more correct maner the concept of a robust hero because he is strong of spirit and inteligent. Mean while Goliath belives to be superior than his adversary and he makes this judgement based only on his physical capacity. 

Achille: Robust soldier, fragile man

In Greek mythology, Achilles (Ancient Greek: Ἀχιλλεύς, Achilleus) was a Greek hero of theTrojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.

Achilles also has the attributes of being the most handsome of the heroes assembled againstTroy.

Later legends (beginning with a poem by Statius in the first century AD) state that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel. 

According to the Achilleid, written by Statius in the first century AD, and to no surviving previous sources, when Achilles was born Thetis (his mother) tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx and making him invulnerable. However, he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him, his heel. 

Since he died due to a poisonous arrow shot into his heel, the term "Achilles' heel" has come to mean a person's principal weakness

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles

Villa Reale, Milano

We have chosen the character Achilles to represent our pair of antonyms because we think that he represents both of them very well. With his muscular body and strength he represents ROBUST, but his heel shows his real weakness and how FRAGILE  he really is. 

The Titans

In Greek mythology, the Titans (Ancient Greek: Τιτάν - Ti-tan; plural: Τιτᾶνες - Ti-tânes) were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. The role of the Titans as Elder Gods was overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Olympians, in the Titanomachy ("Battle with the Titans") which effected a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks may have borrowed from the Ancient Near East.

In the first generation of twelve Titans, they are:

    * Coeus - The titan of wisdom.

    * Crius - The titan of strength and power.

    * Cronus - The king of the Titans.

    * Iapetus - The titan of mortality.

    * Oceanus - The titan of the rivers.

    * Hyperion - The titan of supervision and compliance.

    * Mnemosyne – The titanessa of memories

    * Phoebe – The titanessa of darkness .

    * Rhea – The queen of Titans.

    * Tethys - The titanessa of the rivers.

    * Theia - The titanessa of sight and light.

    * Themis - The titanessa of justice.

The second generation of Titans consisted of Hyperion's children Eos, Helios, and Selene; Coeus's daughters Leto and Asteria; Iapetus's sons Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius; and Crius's sons Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses.

In particular in Greek mythology, Crius, Kreios or Krios (Ancient Greek: Κρεῖος, Κριός) was one of the Titans in the list given in Hesiod's Theogony, a son of Uranus and Gaia. The least individualized among them, he was overthrown in the Titanomachy. M.L. West has suggested how Hesiod filled out the complement of Titans from the core group— adding three figures from the archaic tradition of Delphi, Koios, Phoibe, whose name Apollo assumed with the oracle, and Themis. Among possible further interpolations among the Titans was Kreios, whose interest for Hesiod was as the father of Perses and grandfather of Hekate, for whom Hesiod was, according to West, an "enthusiastic evangelist".

Joined to fill out lists of Titans to form a total that made a match with the Twelve Olympians, Crius/Kreios was inexorably involved in the eleven-year-long war between the Olympian gods and Titans, the Titanomachy, however without any specific part to play. When the war was lost, Crius/Kreios was banished along with the others to the lower level of Hades called Tartarus. From his chthonic position in the Underworld, no classical association with Aries, the "Ram" of the zodiac, is ordinarily made.