When you think of Sisyphus, an image comes to mind: a man, a stone, a mountain. If you look for a painting of that scene, one of the ones that best shows the weight is in the Prado Museum, in Madrid, and it is by Titian. The first thing the painting does is take the man's face away from you. What is left to look at is the load.
What you see on the canvas
Sisyphus is an oil painting by Titian, from 1548-1549, now in the Prado Museum. The canvas measures about 237 by 216 centimeters, taller than a person. In it, Sisyphus carries the stone up the mountain, and the stone is so large that it covers his face and part of his back. You can't see who the man is, nor his expression. You see only the weight of the load, the climb.
That is what makes the painting hurt. In a portrait, the face says who the person is. Here, the stone takes the place of the face, and what the gaze meets is what crushes, not the one who is crushed.
Who Titian painted it for
The canvas was part of a set. In 1548, Mary of Hungary, sister of Emperor Charles V, commissioned from Titian a series of large paintings of condemned figures from the world of the dead for her palace at Binche. The series became known as the Furies, and the queen took the collection to Spain. Two canvases from that group are in the Prado: Sisyphus and Tityus. The fact that matters here is the simplest: Titian chose to paint this moment of the myth, the climb with the load, and not another.
Titian painted the climb; Camus looks at the descent
In the chapter that gives the book its name, Albert Camus makes a different choice. He does not look at the climb. He looks at the interval after it, when the stone rolls back and the man goes down to fetch it:
"I see this man going back down with heavy and measured steps toward the torment whose end he will never know. That hour, which is like a breath and which returns as surely as his misfortune, that hour is the hour of consciousness." (The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, Brazilian edition by Record, quoted in our translation, chapter The Myth of Sisyphus)
On the climb, the effort swallows everything, and that is what Titian's canvas shows, almost literally: the load swallows the face. On the descent, Sisyphus is empty-handed and knows exactly what will happen again. For Camus, the myth is tragic only because the hero is conscious, and consciousness is in that hour, not the other.
The two do not contradict each other. They show different moments of the same man. Titian painted the instant when the man disappears beneath the load. Camus asks you to look at the moment when he reappears, with nothing in his hands. For the full argument of the essay, start with The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus: Summary and Where to Start.
The question the painting gives back
If the canvas shows the climb, the question it leaves is about the descent. Thinking is not only climbing under a load. It is noticing the interval in which you come down, every day, with empty hands, before carrying again. In the video, this interval gets a name: the hour of empty hands. It is not rest. It is the hour when you stop pushing and see the whole day at once.
Everyone has theirs: the car parked in the garage, the television where you change channels without knowing what you want to watch. What's yours? The path to that hour, the sentence from Camus that comes before the one that became the mug, is in One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy: The Full Sentence. And for anyone who wants to know what Sisyphus did to deserve the stone, the crime is in What Was Sisyphus's Crime? The Man Who Cheated Death.
Nous Reading List
Read the classics in depth
Our list of more than 230 recommended books, annotated and organized by theme, so you don't read in the dark.
See the recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
Where is Titian's Sisyphus?
In the Prado Museum, in Madrid. It is an oil painting from 1548-1549, measuring about 237 by 216 centimeters, painted by Titian for the series known as the Furies.
What does the painting Sisyphus by Titian show?
Sisyphus carrying the stone up the mountain. The stone is so large that it covers his face and part of his back, and what you see is the weight of the load, the climb, not the man.
What is the difference between Titian's Sisyphus and Camus's?
Titian painted the climb, with the man swallowed by the stone. Camus does not look at the climb. He looks at the interval after it, the descent back to torment, in which Sisyphus is empty-handed and conscious.
Continue: The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus: Summary and Where to Start · What Was Sisyphus's Crime? The Man Who Cheated Death · One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy: The Full Sentence · Le notti bianche: Visconti films Dostoevsky in Rome
Source lesson: O Mito de Sísifo, de Albert Camus