The rape of Proserpina

Dedicated to my love of marble sculptures, the painting reflects a fragment of Berninis Roman sculpture The Abduction of Proserpine (1622). The plot is based on a scene from mythology depicting the abduction of Proserpine (Persephone in Greek mythology), namely the moment when the god Pluto (Hades) grabs his future wife to imprison her in the underworld.
According to the myth, Hades, seeing the blooming beauty of Persephone, decided to kidnap her. He begged the goddess of the Earth Gaia to grow a flower of extraordinary beauty. Persephone, seeing the flower, stretched out her hand to it, and as soon as she plucked it, the earth opened up. On black horses in a golden chariot, the lord of the shadow kingdom Hades appeared from under the ground and grabbed Persephone.
Upon hearing her daughters cry, Ceres, the goddess of fertility (Demeter) rushed to her aid, but all efforts were in vain. As soon as she realized that Hades had secretly kidnapped her beloved child, she became enraged, and sent an unprecedented drought to the earth, which killed the entire harvest. Persephones father Jupiter (Zeus), watching from heaven as fields, orchards and vineyards were destroyed, decided to intervene in what was happening. He sent Hermes to his brother Hades to negotiate. Hades agreed to let Persephone go to her mother, but first gave her a pomegranate seed to swallow — a symbol of marriage. Subsequently, the gods decided that Persephone would live with her mother for two thirds of the year, and one third in the kingdom of her husband Hades.