Bident - in Art

In Art

In Western art of the Middle Ages, classical underworld figures began to be depicted with a pitchfork. Early Christian writers identified the classical underworld with Hell, and its denizens as demons or devils. In the Renaissance, the bident became a conventional attribute of Pluto in art. Pluto, with Cerberus at his side, is shown holding the bident in the mythological ceiling mural painted by Raphael's workshop for the Villa Farnesina (the Loggia di Psiche, 1517–18). In a scene depicting a council of the gods, the three brothers Jove, Pluto, and Neptune are grouped closely, with a Cupid standing before them. Neptune holds the trident. Elsewhere in the loggia, a putto holds a bident.

Perhaps influenced by this work, Agostino Carracci had depicted Pluto with a bident in a preparatory drawing for his painting Pluto (1592), in which the god holds instead his characteristic key. In Caravaggio's Giove, Nettuno e Plutone (ca. 1597), a ceiling mural based on alchemical allegory, it is Neptune who holds the bident.