A fascination with the Romantics has always held a keen interest with me on numerous levels. Especially its notion of the 'Sublime' with its unsettling and almost disturbing power.
In this painting a Minotaur and a female figure dominate the picture. I do realize the Minotaur can have several meanings. In Homer I believe he was the judge of souls, in Dante’s Divine Comedy he symbolizes the ‘matta bestialitade’, the blind violence. Also he can be seen as a metaphor for death and therefor as a symbol for non-being.
However, what fascinates me the most is the idea that the Minotaur - being result from a liaison of Pasiphaë and a bull – symbolizes a coincidentia oppositorum. A meeting of opposites. Therefor the Minotaur embodies both creature and human, rational and irrational, feminine and masculine, destiny and fate, good and evil