Circe Invidiosa

By 1892 Waterhouse had built a reputation on women from myth and legend, and here he painted the sorceress Circe at her most cold. The scene comes from Ovid. The sea god Glaucus loves the nymph Scylla and asks Circe for a potion to win her, but Circe wants Glaucus for herself, and when he refuses her she takes revenge on the girl instead. Waterhouse shows the moment she pours green poison into the pool where Scylla bathes, her face set, standing over a swirl of deep blue-green water that already hints at the monster Scylla will become. The Latin word invidiosa in the title means jealous. He stretched the canvas tall and narrow so Circe seems to tower, and let the poisoned colour flood almost everything except her red gown. Below her feet, in that turning water, you can just make out the sea creature rising, the shape of what her envy is about to make.