Brent Everett Brent Corrigan

NARCISO


Narciso: son of the river god and the nymph Liriope Cefis. His myth is narrated according to different versions.
Certainly the most famous is that recounted by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, the poet says that he is a young man 's incomparable beauty, and desired by young girls. But he, heedless of all, indifferent to the passion of love, dedicated exclusively to hunting spending his days in complete solitude. As he
falls in love with Echo, a nymph condemned by Juno to repeat the last words heard.
Narcissus rejects his love, fled into the woods, Eco is consumed for the love of her until only her voice remains.
When another nymph falls in love with the young and is invariably dismissed as all the other pretenders, this calls into heaven to punish Narcissus: his wish is granted by Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, one day the young man, tired of having driven long, he stopped near a spring, and while it cools, he finds his own reflection in the water: he falls in love with her.
Realizing that he could never give her love to that image, is allowed to die, bringing to fruition the revenge request.
His body disappears and in its place a flower is born will have his name.

Others tell us that one day, leaning too close to her reflection in a pond, as if to kiss her, he fell in and drowned: the gods, for compassion, it changed into the flower that bears his name.
According to a third version, the gods led him to suicide and the flower was born from his blood.

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Narcissus is often shown, pictorially, everything just as he reflected in a fountain next to him always the flower that bears his name.
In his work, for example, Caravaggio portrays him alone, in my opinion, the great artist, knows how to make perfect the moment of falling In fact the young man seems entranced in front of his image and apparently can not just separarse more: the image of him and form a whole, almost in an embrace ... all around is darkness, as if to signify that there is no other Narciso now that his effigy.

Other times, there is also close Eco: in the painting by Nicolas Poussin, the nymph is almost evanescent: this will most likely to show that the poor woman was dying to love to the point of being only "voice." In the work of Poussin
the torch is to be noted that the cupid's hand: This is meant to symbolize the death of Narcissus: in fact with the torches were lit Funeral processions and then used to light the funeral pyre.
Finally, the flowers next to the lifeless young now, alluding to the metamorphosis of Narcissus.

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So the flower becomes a symbol of selfishness and self-love. The funeral
meaning derives from the fact that they believed they had a hell of flower: in fact, Homer, Hymn to Demeter speaks and says that the flower was created by Jupiter from the earth to "please the god that many people accept" that is Pluto or Hades, god of the underworld.
addition to greek, narkissos narkào has the root of the verb meaning "to numb, stiff," and then gives the sense of death.

In Christian iconography of the Annunciation in the representations or Paradise, the flower takes on the meaning of Divine Love and eternal triumph of life over death, selfishness and sin, an example of Divine Love also gives us the the "Noli Me Tangere" by Fra Angelico.

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Even the flower can be found in the iconography of Cesare Ripa to represent when the Stupidity, shows us a woman caressing a goat, having daffodils in his hand and a crown of these same flowers in mind: the Ripa says, its always considering the Greek root Narki "the narcissus flower is that serious and foolish
the head. "
The same Ripa's love shows itself with a woman who has a crown on the head of Bladder, holding a daffodil and feet a peacock.