Editing Niobe (section)

==In literature and fine arts==
[[File:Uffizi Gallery - Daughter of Niobe bent by terror.jpg|thumbnail|left|''Daughter of Niobe bent by terror'', Niobe room in [[Uffizi gallery]] ]]

===Literature===
[[File:Lineage Tantalus.svg|thumb|250px|Lineage of Tantalus]]
The story of Niobe, and especially her sorrows, is an ancient one. The context in which she is mentioned by [[Achilles]] to [[Priam]] in [[Homer]]'s ''[[Iliad]]'' is as a stock type for mourning. Priam is not unlike Niobe in the sense that he was also grieving for his son [[Hector]], who was killed and not buried for several days.

Niobe is also mentioned in [[Sophocles]]'s ''[[Antigone (Sophocles play)|Antigone]]'' where, as Antigone is marched toward her death, she compares her own loneliness to that of Niobe.<ref>[https://archive.today/20120711002217/http://magic.education2020.com/Websites/Literature/antigone.html Antigone], around line 940. ANTIGONE: I’ve heard about a guest of ours, daughter of Tantalus, from Phrygia – she went to an excruciating death in Sipylus, right on the mountain peak. The stone there, just like clinging ivy, wore her down, and now, so people say, the snow and rain never leave her there, [830] as she laments. Below her weeping eyes her neck is wet with tears. God brings me to a final rest which most resembles hers. [940] CHORUS: But Niobe was a goddess, born divine – and we are human beings, a race which dies. But still, it’s a fine thing for a woman, once she’s dead, to have it said she shared, in life and death, the fate of demi-gods.</ref> [[Sophocles]] is said to have also contributed a play titled ''Niobe'' that is lost.

The ''Niobe'' of [[Aeschylus]], set in Thebes, survives in fragmentary quotes that were supplemented by a papyrus sheet containing twenty-one lines of text.<ref>A. D. Fitton Brown offered a reconstruction of the form of the play, in {{cite journal|author=A. D. Fitton Brown|title=Niobe|journal=The Classical Quarterly|volume=4|issue=3/4|date=July 1954|pages= 175–180|doi=10.1017/S0009838800008077|s2cid=246875795 }}</ref> From the fragments it appears that for the first part of the tragedy the grieving Niobe sits veiled and silent.

Furthermore, the conflict between Niobe and Leto is mentioned in one of [[Sappho]]'s poetic fragments ("Before they were mothers, Leto and Niobe had been the most devoted of friends.").<ref>{{cite book|title = The poems of Sappho: an interpretative rendition into English |author= John Myers O'Hara | publisher=Forgotten Books|year= 1924}}</ref>

In [[Latin language]] sources, Niobe's account is first told by [[Gaius Julius Hyginus|Hyginus]] in his collection of stories in brief and plain ''Fabulae''.

[[Parthenius of Nicaea]] records a rare version of the story of Niobe, in which her father is called Assaon and her husband Philottus. The circumstances in which Niobe loses her children are also different, see {{section link|Niobids#Parthenius variant}}.

Niobe's iconic tears were also mentioned in [[Hamlet]]'s [[soliloquy]] (Act 1, Scene 2), in which he contrasts his mother's grief over the dead King, Hamlet's father – "like Niobe, all tears" – to her unseemly hasty marriage to Claudius.<ref>[[William Shakespeare]], "The [[Tragedy]] of [[Hamlet]], Prince of Denmark"  Act I, scii, l 149, of Queen Gertrude.</ref>

The quotation from Hamlet is also used in [[Dorothy L. Sayers]]' novel ''Murder Must Advertise'', in which an advertising agency's client turns down an advertisement using the quotation as a caption.<ref>[[Dorothy L. Sayers]], ''Murder Must Advertise'', Gollancz, London, 1933</ref>

In [[William Faulkner]]'s novel ''Absalom, Absalom!'' Faulkner compares Ellen, the wife of Sutpen and father of Henry and Judith, to Niobe, "this Niobe without tears, who had conceived to the demon [Sutpen] in a kind of nightmare" (Chapter 1).

Among works of modern literature which have Niobe as a central theme, Kate Daniels' ''Niobe Poems'' can be cited.<ref>{{cite book|title= The Niobe Poems|isbn= 0-8229-3596-1|author= Kate Daniels|publisher= [[University of Pittsburgh Press]]|year= 1988|url-access= registration|url= https://archive.org/details/niobepoems00dani}}</ref>

===Arts===
[[File:Wall painting - death of the Niobids - Pompeii (VII 15 2) - Napoli MAN 111479.jpg|thumb|300px|[[Apollo]] and [[Artemis]] shoot the sons of Niobe, who flee (partly on horseback) in an idyllic landscape, fresco in [[Pompeii]], 1st c. BC – 1st c. AD.]]
[[File:Niobe 1905 Thomas Henry Massey (-1946).ogg|thumb|'Niobe' gavotte named after the 1904 farce by Harry Paulton concerning a figure of Greek mythology]]
The subject of Niobe and the destruction of the [[Niobids]] was part of the repertory of Attic vase-painters and inspired sculpture groups and wall frescoes as well as relief carvings on Roman [[sarcophagus|sarcophagi]].

The subject of the Attic calyx-krater from [[Orvieto]] conserved in the [[Musée du Louvre]] has provided the name for the [[Niobid Painter]].<ref>identified by Webster, ''Der Niobidenmaler'', Leipzig 1935; the iconography of the reverse subject and its possible relation to a lost Early Classical wall-painting by [[Polygnotes]] was examined in {{cite journal |author=Erika Simon |year=1963 |title=Polygnotan Painting and the Niobid Painter |journal=American Journal of Archaeology |volume=67 |issue=1 |pages=43–62 |jstor=502702}}</ref>

A lifesize group of marble Niobids, including one of Niobe sheltering one of her daughters, found in Rome in 1583 at the same time as the ''[[Wrestlers (sculpture)|Wrestlers]]'', were taken in 1775 to the [[Uffizi]] in [[Florence]] where, in a gallery devoted to them, they remain some of the most prominent surviving sculptures of [[Classical antiquity]] (''see below''). New instances come to light from time to time, like one headless statue found in early 2005 among the ruins of a villa in the [[Villa dei Quintili]] just outside [[Rome]].<ref>{{cite journal|title = A tragic figure emerges from the ruins of a Roman villa|author=Jarrett A. Lobell|journal=[[Archaeology (magazine)|Archaeology]]|volume=58|issue= 4|date=July–August 2005}}</ref>

In painting, Niobe was painted by post-Renaissance artists from varied traditions (''see below''). An early appearance, ''The Death of Niobe's Children'' by [[Abraham Bloemaert]], was painted in 1591 towards the start of the [[Dutch Golden Age]]. The English artist [[Richard Wilson (painter)|Richard Wilson]] gained great acclaim for his ''[[The Destruction of the Children of Niobe]]'', painted in 1760. Three notable works, all dating from the 1770s, ''Apollo and Diana Attacking Niobe and her Children'' by [[Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier]], ''The Children of Niobe Killed by Apollo and Diana'' by [[Pierre-Charles Jombert]] and ''Diana and Apollo Piercing Niobe’s Children with their Arrows'' by [[Jacques-Louis David]] belong to the tradition of [[French Baroque and Classicism]].

''Niobe'' is an abstract painting by [[Károly Patkó]].<ref>A sketch is found [http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_159084/Karoly-Patko/Sketch-for-Niobe-1923 here].</ref>
 
In classical music, Italian composer Agostino Steffani (1654–1728) dedicated his opera "[[Niobe, regina di Tebe|Niobe, Queen of Saba]]" to her myth, and [[Giovanni Pacini]] too wrote an [[:it:Niobe_(Pacini)|opera]] on this myth. [[Benjamin Britten]] based one of his ''[[Six Metamorphoses after Ovid]]'' on Niobe.

In modern music, [[Caribou (musician)|Caribou]] called the last track on his 2007 album ''[[Andorra (album)|Andorra]]'' "Niobe".

In modern dance, [[José Limón]] named a section of his dance theatre work ''Dances for Isadora'' as "Niobe". The section is a solo for a woman mourning the loss of her children.

A marble statue of Niobe is a female lead character in a long-running 1892 farce [[Niobe (play)]] by [[Harry Paulton]]. In the play she is bought to life by a quaint electrical storm and brings the Edwardian values and relationships in the household to disarray. The season at the London [[Royal Strand Theatre]] enjoyed more than five hundred performances. The play is the subject of a musical dedication by [[Australians|Australian]] composer Thomas Henry Massey. The play was filmed in 1915.<ref>{{Citation
  | title=Niobe [music] : gavotte (All smiles) / composed by T. H. Massey
  | author1=Massey, T. H., 1870?–1946
  | publisher=Wm. Bruce & Co
  | language=zxx
}}</ref>
{{clear}}

===Examples in painting and sculpture===
<gallery widths=210 heights=200>
File:Sommer, Giorgio (1834-1914) - n. 2990 - Niobe madre - Firenze.jpg|Picture of the [[Uffizi]] sculpture representing Niobe photographed by [[Giorgio Sommer]]
File:Abraham Bloemaert - Apollo and Diana Punishing Niobe by Killing her Children - Google Art Project.jpg|1591 painting by [[Abraham Bloemaert]]
File:François Spierincx 002.jpg|1610 tapestry by [[François Spierincx]]
File:Destruction of Niobe's children.jpg|1760 painting by [[Richard Wilson (painter)|Richard Wilson]]
File:Niobe&Enfants 1770painting Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier.jpg|1770 painting by [[Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier]]
File:Pierre-Charles Jombert - Les enfants de Niobé tués par Apollon et Diane.JPG|1772 painting by [[Pierre-Charles Jombert]]
File:Niobe Statue Kvetna Gardens Kromeriz Czech Republic.jpg|Statue of Niobe in Květné Gardens, [[Kroměříž]], [[Czech Republic]]
File:Houdini Gravesite.jpg|Niobe statue at [[Harry Houdini]]'s Grave in New York City
File:Munich Niobid sarcophagus.jpg|Roman sarcophagus showing the massacre of Niobeʼs children. Ca 160 AD. [[Glyptothek]], Munich.
</gallery>