Who painted the 1896 oil painting titled Pandora, now associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement?

John William Waterhouse painted the 1896 oil painting titled Pandora.

Waterhouse’s Pandora shows the mythological woman beside the opened vessel, focusing on the tense moment associated with the release of suffering. The painting belongs to the artist’s sustained interest in literary and mythological subjects, and its rich, atmospheric style is often discussed in relation to the Pre-Raphaelite tradition and its later influence.

Waterhouse was an English painter whose subjects frequently included figures from classical mythology and medieval or literary stories. His other well-known works include The Lady of Shalott and Hylas and the Nymphs. Pandora is sometimes confused with paintings of the same figure by Dante Gabriel Rossetti or other Victorian artists, but the 1896 work titled Pandora is by Waterhouse. The image’s vessel is also part of the long visual tradition that treats Hesiod’s jar as a box.