Art needs a muse, a guiding power. A muse permeates the male artist and brings forth a work from the womb of his artistic mind. The muse in her purest aspect is the feminine part of the male artist.
It is said of a muse that "she is the anima to his animus, the yin to his yang, except that, in a reversal of gender roles, she penetrates or inspires him and he gestates and brings forth, from the womb of the mind."
Painters don't claim muses until painting begins to be considered as poetry. Andrea del Sarto, an Italian painter in the 15th century, had Lucrezia as his muse, who resembled closely with his ideal that he made 'all his female figures in her likeness'. Sarto later
was famously married to his muse, Lucrezia.
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| Roman bust of Sappho |
sa
or
Greek Mousa.They say in Boeotia's
tradition, the homeland of Hesiod, the Muses had once been three in
number for others that there are nine, but the number nine has
prevailed, according to Homer and Hesiod. Muses, personifying
knowledge and the arts, especially literature, dance and music, were
the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, memory taking godly form.
But in Plutarch' Quaestiones Conviviviales only three ancient Muses
have been taken into account. Roman scholar Varro also relates that
there are only three Muses, one is born from the movement of water,
another who makes sound by striking the air, and a third who is
embodied only in the human voice. Their names are Melete or Practice,
Mneme or Memory and Aoide or Song. Sometimes they are referred to as
water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and with Pieris.
It was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his
hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst
forth, from which the muses were born.
However, in the classical
understanding, nine muses embody arts and
inspire creation with their graces through song, drama, verses,
music, and dance. Later Sappho of Lesbos had been proclaimed the tenth muse, by Plato. Sappho's poetry was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity. Although has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.
'Muse' has become a
somewhat conventional compliment paid to female poets since.
