Editing Pandora (section)

==Pandora's relationship to Eve==
[[File:Jean Cousin (I) - Eva Prima Pandora - WGA05537.jpg|thumb|Jean Cousin, painting on panel, ''Eva Prima Pandora'' (Eve the first Pandora), 1550]]

There is an additional reason why Pandora should appear nude, in that it was a theological commonplace going back to the early [[Church Fathers]] that the Classical myth of Pandora made her a type of [[Eve]].<ref>Stella P. Revard, "Milton and Myth" in ''Reassembling Truth: Twenty-first-century Milton'', Susquehanna University 2003, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Hz3bAJ7v_RMC&q=Tertullian p.37]</ref> Each is the first woman in the world; and each is a central character in a story of transition from an original state of plenty and ease to one of suffering and death, a transition which is brought about as a punishment for transgression of divine law.

It has been argued that it was as a result of the [[Hellenisation]] of [[Western Asia]] that the [[misogyny]] in Hesiod's account of Pandora began openly to influence both Jewish and then Christian interpretations of scripture.<ref name="Phipps1988" /> The doctrinal bias against women so initiated then continued into the [[Renaissance]]. Bishop Jean Olivier's long Latin poem ''Pandora'' drew on the Classical account as well as the Biblical to demonstrate that woman is the means of drawing men to sin. Originally appearing in 1541 and republished thereafter, it was soon followed by two separate French translations in 1542 and 1548.<ref>Raymond Trousson, ''Le thème de Prométhée dans la littérature européenne'', Geneva 2001, p.168</ref>  At the same period appeared a 5-act tragedy by the Protestant theologian Leonhard Culmann (1498-1568) titled ''Ein schön weltlich Spiel von der schönen Pandora'' (1544), similarly drawing on Hesiod in order to teach conventional Christian morality.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/werkansicht?PPN=PPN807086886&DMDID=&PHYSID=PHYS_0005| title = Berlin National Library}}</ref>
 
The equation of the two also occurs in the 1550 allegorical painting by [[Jean Cousin the Elder]], ''Eva Prima Pandora'' (Eve the first Pandora), in which a naked woman reclines in a grotto. Her right elbow rests on a skull, indicating the bringing of death, and she holds an apple branch in that hand – both attributes of Eve. Her left arm is wreathed by a snake (another reference to the temptation of Eve) and that hand rests on an unstopped jar, Pandora's attribute. Above hangs the sign from which the painting gains its name and beneath it is a closed jar, perhaps the counterpart of the other in Olympus, containing blessings.<ref>Pamela Norris, ''Eve: A Biography'', New York University 2001, [https://books.google.com/books?id=-fE8DAAAQBAJ&dq=Pandora+Eve&pg=PA124 p.125]</ref>

[[File:Nicolas Régnier - Allegory of Vanity (Pandora).JPG|thumb|upright|[[Nicolas Régnier]]: ''Allegory of Vanity—Pandora'', {{Circa|1626}}]]
 
In Juan de Horozco's Spanish [[emblem book]], ''Emblemas morales'' (1589), a motive is given for Pandora's action. Accompanying an illustration of her opening the lid of an urn from which demons and angels emerge is a commentary that condemns "female curiosity and the desire to learn by which the very first woman was deceived".<ref>''Enciclopedia Akal de Emblemas Españoles Ilustrados'', Madrid 1999, [https://books.google.com/books?id=1mqNvGq3tuoC&dq=Pandora+Alciato&pg=PA617 Emblem 1260]</ref> In the succeeding century that desire to learn was equated with the female demand to share the male prerogative of education. In [[Nicolas Regnier]]'s painting "The Allegory of Vanity" (1626), subtitled "Pandora", it is typified by her curiosity about the contents of the urn that she has just unstopped and is compared to the other attributes of vanity surrounding her (fine clothes, jewellery, a pot of gold coins).<ref>Line Cottegnies, Sandrine Parageau, ''Women and Curiosity in Early Modern England and France'', Brill 2016, [https://books.google.com/books?id=aH4JDAAAQBAJ&dq=Nicolas+Regnier%2C+Allegory+of+Vanity+1626&pg=PA12 p.12]</ref> Again, [[Pietro Paolini]]'s lively Pandora of about 1632 seems more aware of the effect that her pearls and fashionable headgear is making than of the evils escaping from the jar she holds.<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.dorotheum.com/en/auctions/current-auctions/kataloge/list-lots-detail/auktion/10313-old-master-paintings/lotID/547/lot/1584988-pietro-paolini.html| title = Dorotheum auctions| access-date = 2018-01-17| archive-date = 2018-01-18| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180118181120/https://www.dorotheum.com/en/auctions/current-auctions/kataloge/list-lots-detail/auktion/10313-old-master-paintings/lotID/547/lot/1584988-pietro-paolini.html| url-status = dead}}</ref> There is a social message carried by these paintings too, for education, no less than expensive adornment, is only available to those who can afford it.
 
But an alternative interpretation of Pandora's curiosity makes it merely an extension of childish innocence. This comes out in portrayals of Pandora as a young girl, as in [[Walter Crane]]'s "Little Pandora" spilling buttons while encumbered by the doll she is carrying,<ref>{{cite web| url = https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O708322/little-pandora-engraving-crane-walter-rws| title = Victoria & Albert Museum}}</ref> in [[Arthur Rackham]]'s book illustration<ref>{{cite web| url = https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pandora_by_Arthur_Rackham.jpg| title = Wikimedia| date = 1922}}</ref> and [[Frederick Stuart Church]]'s etching of an adolescent girl taken aback by the contents of the ornamental box she has opened.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.artoftheprint.com/artistpages/church_frederick_stuart_pandora.htm| title = Art of the Print}}</ref> The same innocence informs [[Odilon Redon]]'s 1910/12 clothed figure carrying a box and merging into a landscape suffused with light, and even more the 1914 version of a naked Pandora surrounded by flowers, a primaeval Eve in the [[Garden of Eden]].<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437383| title = Metropolitan Museum| date = 1914}}</ref> Such innocence, "naked and without alarm" in the words of an earlier French poet, portrays Pandora more as victim of a conflict outside her comprehension than as temptress.

===Between Eve and Pygmalion===
Early dramatic treatments of the story of Pandora are works of musical theatre. ''La Estatua de Prometeo'' (1670) by [[Pedro Calderón de la Barca]] is made an allegory in which devotion to learning is contrasted with the active life. Prometheus moulds a clay statue of [[Minerva]], the goddess of wisdom to whom he is devoted, and gives it life from a stolen sunbeam. This initiates a debate among the gods whether a creation outside their own work is justified; his devotion is in the end rewarded with permission to marry his statue.<ref>David Jonathan Hildner, ''Reason and the Passions in the Comedias of Calderón'', John Benjamin's Publishing Co. 1982, [https://books.google.com/books?id=d7dQAP-tIusC&dq=%22La+Estatua+de+Prometeo+%22+Calderon&pg=PA67 pp.67-71]</ref> In this work, Pandora, the statue in question, plays only a passive role in the competition between Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus (signifying the active life), and between the gods and men.

[[File:Pandora MET DT2160.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|''Pandora'', [[Odilon Redon]]'s {{Circa|1914}} oil painting depicting Pandora as an innocent Eve]]

Another point to note about Calderón's musical drama is that the theme of a statue married by her creator is more suggestive of the story of [[Pygmalion (mythology)|Pygmalion]]. The latter is also typical of [[Voltaire]]'s ultimately unproduced opera ''Pandore'' (1740).<ref>''The Works of M. de Voltaire'', London 1762, [https://archive.org/details/works13smolgoog pp.221-51]</ref> There too the creator of a statue animates it with stolen fire, but then the plot is complicated when Jupiter also falls in love with this new creation but is prevented by [[Destiny]] from consummating it. In revenge the god sends Destiny to tempt this new Eve into opening a box full of curses as a punishment for Earth's revolt against Heaven.<ref>Jean-François de La Harpe, ''Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne: Dix-huitième siècle'', Paris 1825, [https://books.google.com/books?id=eVJCAAAAYAAJ&dq=Pandore+poeme&pg=PA102 pp.102-106]</ref>

If Pandora appears suspended between the roles of Eve and of Pygmalion's creation in Voltaire's work, in [[Charles-Pierre Colardeau]]'s erotic poem ''Les Hommes de Prométhée'' (1774) she is presented equally as a love-object and in addition as an unfallen Eve:

<blockquote><poem>Not ever had the painter's jealous veil
Shrouded the fair Pandora's charms:
Innocence was naked and without alarm.<ref>Charles-Pierre Colardeau, ''Les Hommes de Prométhée'' (1774), [https://books.google.com/books?id=xOrbH_P8MBMC&pg=PA16 p. 16]</ref></poem></blockquote>

Having been fashioned from clay and given the quality of "naïve grace combined with feeling", she is set to wander through an enchanted landscape. There she encounters the first man, the prior creation of Prometheus, and warmly responds to his embrace. At the end the couple quit their marriage couch and survey their surroundings "As sovereigns of the world, kings of the universe".<ref>{{cite web| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=xOrbH_P8MBMC| title = Les hommes de Promethée, poëme. Par m. Colardeau| last1 = Colardeau| first1 = Charles Pierre| year = 1775}}</ref>

One other musical work with much the same theme was Aumale de Corsenville's one-act verse melodrama ''Pandore'', which had an overture and incidental music by [[Franz Ignaz Beck]]. There Prometheus, having already stolen fire from heaven, creates a perfect female, "artless in nature, of limpid innocence", for which he anticipates divine vengeance. However, his patron Minerva descends to announce that the gods have gifted Pandora with other qualities and that she will become the future model and mother of humanity.<ref>Script and score on [https://books.google.com/books?id=tD1hAAAAcAAJ&dq=Pandore&pg=PP3 Google Books]</ref> The work was performed on 2 July 1789, on the very eve of the [[French Revolution]],<ref>Cesare Scarton, ''Il melologo: una ricerca storica tra recitazione e musica'', Edimond 1998, [https://www.google.co.uk/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22Franz+Ignaz+Beck+%22+Pandore&num=10 p.43]</ref> and was soon forgotten in the course of the events that followed.