Pandora's Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (Princeton Legacy Library)

Pandora was the "pagan Eve," and she is one of the rare mythological figures to have retained vitality up to our day. Glorified by Calderón, Voltaire, and Goethe, she is familiar to all of us, and "Pandora's box" is a household word. In this classic study Dora and Erwin Panofsky trace the history of Pandora and of Pandora’s box in European literature and art from Roman times to the present.

"A delightful book on the myth. The Panofskys tell how the myth has been transformed both by the fantasy and by the mistakes of modern artists and writers from the Renaissance to the present day. Not only do they do so, vividly and sometimes wittily, but they give us sixty pictures ranging all the way from an exquisite Benvenuto Cellini sculpture to a percipient but loathsome Paul Klee still life."--Gilbert Highet