Ashmolean The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

The lithograph shows a series of Greek deities. From left to right, they are: Hephaestus, Hera, with Poseidon holding his trident just beside her, Apollo playing his lyre, Zeus, with Athena springing fully-armed from his forehead, Eileithyia, Heracles wearing his lion-skin, and Ares in armour and holding a round shield. It reproduces the decoration of a black-figure amphora, the so-called "Callias Vase", in the British Museum. The print was plate LXV.A in the first volume of Lenormant and de Witte's "Elite des monuments céramographiques", published in 1844. It was presumably taken from Ruskin's copy of the work now preserved in the Ruskin Library (inventory no. 1996B2621), which is missing many of its plates.

The print was first catalogued by Ruskin in 1871, when it appeared as no 23 E in the Educational Series, entitled "Zeus and the Great Gods", accompanying a series of plates from Lenormant and de Witte in Case II, "Elementary Illustrations of Greek Design". It remained in the same position, although renumbered as no. 43, in the 1874 catalogue of the series, but does not appear in Ruskin's 1878 reorganisation of the series.

Ruskin referred to the image in "Aratra Pentelici", expanding upon his lecture of 26 November 1870 on "Imagination", when he discussed Hephaestus's role at the birth of Athena: this plate 'gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow it to be deciphered) a characteristic representation of the scene, as conceived in later art' (Aratra Pentelici, §§ 73-74 = XX.247-248; see also § 2 n. = XX.194).