The Mirror of the Gods: How the Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods

In The Mirror of the Gods, Malcolm Bull tells the revolutionary story of how the great artists of Western Europe--from Botticelli and Leonardo to Titian and Rubens--revived the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. Each chapter focuses on a different deity and sheds dazzling new light on such familiar figures as Venus, Hercules, and Bacchus. Bull draws on hundreds of illustrations to illuminate the ancient myths through the eyes of Renaissance and Baroque artists, not as they appear in classical literature.

Malcolm Bull is head of Art History at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St. Edmund Hall.