Ajax Line Art

Ajax Line ArtA minimalist single line drawing of Ajax the Great, the massive shield bearing Greek warrior of Homer's Iliad. The entire figure is carried in a single continuous line shield, profile, the heavy stance of a soldier. Ajax, son of Telamon, was king of Salamis and, after Achilles, the strongest and most formidable of the Greek champions at Troy. Homer describes him carrying a tower shield "like a wall" sakos te purgos and fighting Hector to a standstill

Bellerophon rises above the cliffs

A print of Richard Roland Holst's The Archer — the Dutch Symbolist's figure of a bowman drawn in the flat

inherited from Zeus

a radical contrast with the idealised athletes of the earlier classical canon

and is at last forgiven

All muses with the exception of Clio and Urania were devoted to the arts

The figure became

This print isolates the hand detail

Hector was the eldest son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy

seamed where ancient repairs were made — reads with the clarity of archaeological photography

painters opened the wall into architectural fantasies — colonnades

as opposed to the generalised type