Creative muse definition2/13/2024 ![]() We can see this in two of Édouard Manet’s most famous muses: Victorine Meurent and Berthe Morisot. There is a darker side to being an artist’s muse. As a result, an artist’s muse is often held in high regard – after all, she inspired countless masterpieces, from the Renaissance to the Pre-Raphaelites. Typically referring to a woman, she is an idealized, goddess-like figure captured by the artist and preserved as luscious and young in perpetuity. This is what happened to the term muse it came to be understood as an inspiration or influence behind an artwork, be it literature, painting, or sculpture. Over time, as Christianity took hold in Europe, many pagan traditions were shifted and molded to meet the new cultural guidelines. How, then, did pagan goddesses become associated with artists from Christianized Europe? It’s a great question, as the visual arts clearly weren’t their domain. ![]() We know this from literature like Homer’s Odyssey throughout the Odyssey Homer invokes one or more Muses, asking them for guidance as he relates his epic. Greek playwrights, poets, and musicians would send a prayer or offering to their patron goddess, asking for success and inspiration. Note that most of the forms of creative expression have to do with theater or literature, which were held in the highest regard by the Greeks (they were the true representations of high art at the time, as opposed to painting or sculpture). This was used in reference to the nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (love poetry/ lyric art), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polymnia (hymns), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy). The first known reference to the term muse can be attributed to the Greek word “mousa”, which loosely translates to music or song. A muse, however, will stick around in an artist’s oeuvre, as they are a source of rich artistic and creative inspiration, rather than a source of compositional or anatomical reference. While a muse can model for an artist, models come and go artists use models to capture specific attributes or directly reference them for portraits, but these individuals may only be used for a few works of art. It is also important to note that a muse is different from an artist’s model. It’s a question that is asked time and again, throughout history: What inspired this work of art? Or, more specifically, who or what was the artist’s muse? There are two definitions for muse: the first and oldest definition relates to each of the nine Greek Muses, while the contemporary definition is a person or personified force that acts as the source of inspiration. Sometimes we know the answer, through the title, description accompanying the artwork, or from literature about the artist and their works (like a catalogue raisonné) other times we don’t. One of the most popular questions when I lead an exhibition tour is, “What inspired the artist to make this?”. ![]() Elizabeth Kilmer, Exhibitions Content Manager
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