La lotta di Thor con i giganti

By 1872, when the Swedish painter Winge finished this, educated Scandinavians were rediscovering their old Norse gods with real pride, part of a wider current that wanted a heritage of its own to set beside Greece and Rome. He shows Thor, god of thunder, planted in his goat-drawn chariot, red-bearded and furious, swinging his hammer Mjolnir as lightning splits the sky and the stone giants recoil below. Winge painted the picture in Rome, far from the northern world it imagines. Its clean, bright drawing owes as much to his years studying classical art in Italy as to any saga.