Ceres Searching for Proserpina

Digitised using an Artec Eva.

This figurative work depicts Ceres, in a popular narrative from early Roman religion. Ceres (Demeter) is the mother of Prosperina, who was abducted by the god of the Underworld (Hades) under the permission of her father Zeus. Ceres, when she found out her daughter had disappeared, searched for her all over the earth with Hecate's torches.

In most versions of the story, Ceres forbids the earth to produce, neglecting the earth and in the depth of despair causes nothing to grow. Zeus, pressed by the cries of hungry people and other deities, forced Hades to return Proserpina. Hades indeed complied with the request, but first he tricked her, giving her some pomegranate seeds to eat. Because she had tasted food of the underworld, she was obliged to spend a third of each year there, hence why we have winter months.

These 3D scans have been produced with an Artec Eva with the ambition to produce a digital representation as close to the original as possible. However, the presented scans are not to be regarded as duplicates as due to inaccessible areas etc deviations from the original might occur

Photography Credit : CC BY-SA 4.0 / Nationalmuseum