Satyr's family (bringing up of Zeus)

Hans Thoma's 'Satyr's Family' (1886) — subtitled 'Bringing Up of Zeus' — represents his mythological subjects within his broader practice of German landscape and figure painting. The subject combines two mythological traditions: the satyr as forest creature of Greek mythology and the infancy of Zeus, hidden by the Curetes in Crete to protect him from his father Kronos. Thoma's version domesticates the mythological subject — the satyr family as parents, the divine infant as their charge — creating an image that bridges the mythological and the intimately familial.

Thoma renders the satyr family with his characteristic combination of mythological subject and naturalistic handling — the fantastical beings (satyrs have the legs of goats) depicted with the same warmth and physical directness he brings to his human subjects. His woodland setting integrates the mythological figures within a German landscape environment that is simultaneously specific and archetypal. The family dynamic — nurturing, protective — gives the mythological subject domestic warmth.