Fourteen children she had – Niobe – and how proud they made her. Niobe boasted she had seven times more children than Leto had. Never anger the mighty. Leto’s twins took revenge: Apollo killed Niobe’s sons and Artemis killed all of Niobe’s daughters. One of them tried, in vain, to pull the deadly arrow out. Here she is shown, slowly dropping on one knee while reaching behind her back. In agony and breathing heavily, she doesn’t care her robes slide away.
The children’s father, Amphion, could not bear the sight of his dead sons and committed suicide. Niobe fled to Sipylus and from sorrow turned to stone. The rocks are still crying.
Statue: Greek, ca. 440 B.C.
Image: Woodcut illustration of Niobe, Amphion and their dead sons, from an incunable German translation by Heinrich Steinhöwel of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris, printed by Johannes Zainer at Ulm ca. 1474.
