Pygmalion (mythology) Pygmalion (mythology) Pygmalion (; Ancient Greek: Πυγμαλίων "Pugmalíōn", "gen".: Πυγμαλίωνος) is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though "Pygmalion" is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name "Pumayyaton", he is most familiar from Ovid's narrative poem "Metamorphoses", in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved. In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. According to Ovid, after seeing the Propoetides he was "not interested in women", but his statue was so beautiful and realistic that he fell in love with it. In time, Aphrodite's festival
Pygmalion and Galatea (1898 film) had long been popular with theatrical illusionists. "Pygmalion and Galatea" was the first film adaptation of the story; many others followed it in the silent era and beyond. Méliès and Jehanne d'Alcy play the roles of Pygmalion and Galatea in the film. Ideas from the myth returned in later films by Méliès, including "The Brahmin and the Butterfly" (1901), in which the woman's power and freedom of choice are emphasized, and which Jennifer Forrest summarized as "a Pygmalion and Galatea scenario gone wrong"; "The Drawing Lesson, or the Living Statue" (1903), in which a mischievous magician creates an equally mischievous