Daughter of Niobe bust – 3D MODEL

This sculpture depicts one of Niobe’s daughters. The tale of Niobe’s offspring stands as one of history’s most poignant narratives. Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, King of Sipylus, bore fourteen children, known as the Niobids. Among them were seven sons and seven daughters, all sired by Amphion, King of Thebes.

During a ceremony honoring Leto, the Titan mother of Zeus’s divine twins, Apollo (god of light and music) and Artemis (goddess of hunting and nature), Niobe boasted of her superior fertility and her children’s unrivaled beauty in Leto’s presence. As punishment for her pride and arrogance, the twins descended to Earth, where Apollo slew all of Niobe’s sons and Artemis killed her daughters. Niobe begged Apollo to spare her last living son, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. 

Another version holds that one daughter, Chloris, and her brother Amyclas survived because they prayed to Leto. Chloris wed Neleus, son of Poseidon, and became the mother of Nestor, whom Apollo granted the years of life taken from the Niobids. Amphion, devastated by the loss of his children, is believed to have either taken his own life or been slain by Apollo while seeking vengeance for his offspring’s deaths. Regardless, Niobe was so grief-stricken that she sought refuge on Mount Sipylus, beseeching the gods to end her suffering.

In a gesture of sympathy, Zeus transformed her into stone, yet even in this form, Niobe continued shedding ceaseless tears, which formed a stream. Legend holds that the Niobids lay unburied until the ninth day after their demise, when the gods themselves interred them, as Zeus had also petrified the people under Niobe’s rule.