Assault of the Giants

Lowe’s work reinvents Henry Fuseli’s drawing ‘The Assault of the Giants upon Olympus’ (c.1772). The Ancient Greek myth of the battle between the Gods and Giants has been converted into a battle of clashing artistic styles. The Giants are depicted nude, brandishing shields, and disproportionate in scale to the much larger Gods. The regally adorned figurative fragments, from Rubens’ ‘The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist’ (c. 1609), represent the Gods and even Mount Olympus itself with Rubens’ infamous larger-than-life paintings and magnificent technical mastery.