Orpheus is a character from ancient Greek mythology, famous for his ability to play the lyre or kithara. His music could enchant the wild animals of the forest, and even the streams would stop and the trees would bend a little lower to listen to his sublime song. He was also a renowned poet, traveled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and even descended into Hades’s underworld to rescue his deceased wife Eurydice.

Orpheus was considered the leader of a poetic tradition known as Orphism, in which, according to some scholars, adherents performed certain rituals and composed or read poems, texts, and hymns, which included an alternative vision of the origins of humanity.

Orpheus is widely referenced in all forms of ancient Greek art, from ceramics to sculpture.