Little Austria/Olgas Terrace

Aganippe was the name of a spring gushing forth from the mountain of Helicon, according to legend created where the winged horse Pegasus alighted with his hooves. Aganippe was the muses´ holy source and had the virtue of conferring poetic inspiration on those who drank from its waters. The muses were the patrons of arts and sciences. Each one of the nine muses represented an art or science.

When Carl Milles was commissioned to create an indoor fountain for the Metropolitan Museum in New in the 1950s, he transformed Aganippe into a reclining woman, and the muses into young men. Bounding on the backs of dolphins, they hold symbols of the various arts in their upraised arms: the patron of sculpture raises high a miniature version of Pegasus, the patron of painting holds a bouquet of flowers waiting to be painted, and the patron of music grasps a saxophone. In the American version, there are five patrons, while at Millesgården, there are only three. The original fountain has since been moved to Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina.

The sculpture was made by one of Carl Milles´ American students, Frances Rich. Saint Francis was born in Italy in 1181 and died in 1226. He founded the Franciscan order and is the patron saint of animals.

The running girl is Diana, the goddess of the hunt from Roman mythology. In Greek mythology her name was Artemis, twin sister to Apollo.

Carl Milles made two fountains with Diana. The first, which includes a figure of Diana, was completed at the end of the 1920s and stands in the courtyard of the Tändstickspalatset on Västra Trädgårdsgatan in Stockholm. The relatively small sculpture stands raised high in the air and turning to her right. She is not raised high by a pillar, but by a pedestal transformed into a tree, carrying in it a fountain bowl. In the lower part of the fountain there are sleeping animals and at the sides of the courtyard there is a boar and a deer, which can also be viewed on the upper terrace at Millesgården.

A few years later, Carl Milles received a commission for a sculpture of Diana for a large office building in Chicago. He created a new version of the goddess, here turning to the left. The lower section also differs, with several basins, one inside the other. The sculpture now resides at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign, Illinois.

Throughout the ages, artists have depicted a clothed Diana, or Artemis. She was the goddess of chastity. There is a myth about the huntsman Actaeon, who happens to glimpse her bathing naked in the waters. The goddess becomes so enraged that she changes Actaeon into a stag and sets his own hounds on him, tearing him to pieces. Could it be that Diana´s nakedness in Milles sculptures portray the precise moment when Actaeon catches a glimpse of her. Diana, or Artemis, is not only the goddess of the hunt. She is also the moon goddess and is often portrayed with a moon.

In New York, Carl Milles saw ice-skaters at Rockerfeller Center. He created many dancing, flying or surfing figures. They move lightly and with no resistance, more or less air-borne. The Ice-skating Princess experiences something of the kind as she flies over the ice or defies gravity in a jump.