'Happy is he whom the Muses love,' wrote the ancient Greek poet Hesiod in around the seventh century BC – and may we all be so blessed. But who were the Muses of whom Hesiod spoke? They were the nine goddesses of inspiration from Greek mythology who have long captured the imagination of artists, poets and thinkers.

The Muses Escaping Violation from Pyreneus

Revered as the divine source of knowledge, creativity and the arts, the Muses have left an indelible mark on culture from ancient Greece to the Renaissance, and even into the modern era. Their continuing influence is clear in the language we use today. An inspiring individual is described as a 'muse', while the word 'museum' originates from the Greek mouseion – a sacred place dedicated to the Muses.

According to ancient Greek myth, the Muses were the daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory. The sisters are particularly associated with a spring that burst forth when the winged horse Pegasus stamped his hooves on the ground of Mount Helicon. The spring, known as the Hippocrene, is thus also associated with poetic inspiration. The moment, as described by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses, is shown in a painting from around 1540, possibly by Girolamo Romanino (1485–1566), called Pegasus and the Muses in The National Gallery, London.

Hesiod's description of the Muses formed the basis for most subsequent interpretations, although the earliest accounts contained variations. The most common list of the Muses includes Calliope – Muse of epic poetry; Clio – Muse of history; Erato – Muse of love poetry; Euterpe – Muse of music; Melpomene – Muse of tragedy; Polyhymnia – Muse of hymns and sacred poetry; Terpsichore – Muse of dance; Thalia – Muse of comedy; and Urania – Muse of astronomy. This sixteenth-century painting depicts each of these Muses in a series of lunettes, with each Muse clearly named.

As was quite typical, these images depict each Muse with a key attribute, roughly standardised in antiquity, providing a visual reminder to the viewer of the field that the Muse in question was believed to inspire. Here, Euterpe, Muse of music, plays a flute while Clio, Muse of history, holds a book.

These goddesses were believed to inspire mortals to create works of art and literature, and their influence was seen as essential for any form of artistic achievement. It is no wonder, therefore, that their image has adorned artworks of all different kinds and genres from the ancient world to the present day. The Muses were often depicted in ancient Greek art, especially on vases and sarcophagi, where they were shown as beautiful, ethereal figures engaged in various creative activities.

Front of a marble relief sarcophagus showing the nine muses

Likewise, the Neoclassical period saw a wealth of artworks inspired by or even copied from such antique works of art. A frieze of the nine Muses now in the Warburg Institute in London is a late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century copy of a panel from a second-century AD Roman sarcophagus, now in the Louvre Museum, Paris.

Copy of a Panel from the 'Sarcophagus of the Muses'*

Instead of marble, the Warburg frieze is made from Coade stone, a composite of clay, terracotta, silicates and glass that was one of the earliest artificial stones. Recently restored to its full glory as part of the Institute's own Renaissance – a building renovation project to expand and transform the Institute's spaces – the frieze depicts the Muses in their role as allegorical figures representing different artistic disciplines.

Meanwhile, the grisaille technique employed by Robert Fagan (1761–1816) in this oil painting, dating from the last decade of the eighteenth century, recalls classical relief sculpture but in two dimensions. It is one of a series of works by Fagan believed to have been commissioned by Thomas Noel Hill, 2nd Baron Berwick (1770–1832) and which are still found at Attingham Park in Shropshire, the former seat of the Noel Hill family.

The Renaissance, a period of renewed interest in classical antiquity, saw a revival of the Muses in art and literature. This Muse, painted in around 1455–1460 by Cosmè Tura (c.1430–1495), is commonly identified as Calliope. This is because she holds a cherry stem, a symbol of justice with which Calliope is often associated.

She was originally destined for the studiolo (study) of Leonello d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (1407–1450), at his hunting retreat. The study of an upper-class man such as Leonello in the Renaissance was a place for intellectual and artistic pursuits. As symbols of the inspiration and creativity necessary for scholarly work, poetry, music and art, the presence of the Muses in the decorative scheme of a study would have served both as a source of inspiration and as a reflection of the owner's cultural and intellectual interests.

From the early sixteenth century, it became common for the Muses to be depicted with the god Apollo as their leader. As the god of music and the arts, Apollo was the ideal accompaniment to the inspirational Muses. He too was often called upon by poets and artists and was associated with order and harmony in artistic expression. In this painted and gilded oak panel dating from around 1580 and now in the collection of London's Victoria and Albert Museum, Apollo is seated in the centre top of the panel, strumming a lyre. He is surrounded by the Muses in various poses.

Here the emphasis is on music. Each Muse plays a different musical instrument – the association of Muses with specific instruments dates back to antiquity. Visible are a recorder, a hurdy-gurdy, a triangle and more. This emphasis is evocative of the panel's probable original setting – as decoration for an important room in a large country house, where music was a key part of everyday life and entertainment.

A near-contemporary work by Tintoretto (1518–1594) also shows the Muses and Apollo with a range of musical instruments, though the composition is starkly different. Later, in Landscape with Apollo and the Muses (1652), French landscape painter Claude Lorrain (1604–1682) depicts Apollo playing his lyre for the muses; Pegasus is just visible beside the fountain.

The Muses were also depicted individually during this period. The sitter for this seventeenth-century representation of Calliope, attributed to the Florentine painter Cesare Dandini (1596–1657), is unknown. Yet her frank gaze holds the viewer's attention, appearing almost as if she is about to speak.

Dandini based his Muse on the description of Calliope in Cesare Ripa's Iconologia (1603), one of the most influential emblem books of the period. Emblem books combined images (emblems) with texts related to the image's significance. Ripa describes Calliope, 'with a golden circlet around her forehead, her left arm holds many garlands of laurel and her right hand three books, on each of which appears its title, these being the Odyssey, the Iliad and the Aeneid.' These same features can be seen in Dandini's portrait.

By the eighteenth century, the Muses had become a popular subject in European art, particularly in the context of the Enlightenment, when there was a strong emphasis on reason, science, and the pursuit of knowledge. The Muses were reinterpreted as symbols of intellectual and artistic achievement, often depicted in settings that reflected the refined tastes of the period. Portraits of contemporary women as Muses became fashionable – such as this one by Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) of the actress Frances Abington dressed as the comic muse Thalia – reflecting the era's fascination with the idea of the 'cultivated' woman who embodied both beauty and intellect.

Mrs Abington (c.1737–1815), as the Comic Muse

This 1779 painting by English painter Richard Samuel (d.1787) includes portraits of nine contemporary women in the guise of the Muses. Here, however, the sitters do not embody each of the traditional nine Muses. Instead, it is the Muses as a group that have become shorthand for artistic inspiration and female endeavour. Each sitter is portrayed with an attribute most fitting to her own cultural pursuit: the painter Angelica Kauffmann with an easel, the singer Elizabeth Sheridan with a lute.

Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, artists continued to explore the theme of the Muses, often reinterpreting in ways that reflected contemporary concerns. Echoing the earlier trend of depicting real women as the Muses, Maud Sulter's (1960–2008) photographic series 'Zabat' (1989) portrayed Black women from creative fields in these roles, allowing her to reimagine the Muses in the context of contemporary Black female identity.

While the nine images – including a self-portrait of Sulter as Calliope – are influenced by the conventions of Victorian portraiture, the costumes and accessories selected by Sulter for each Muse are richly symbolic. Delta Streete, a performance artist, embodied Sulter's Terpsichore, the Muse of dance. Both the dress that Streete wears and the fool's gold that she holds refer to slavery, colonialism and the concomitant erasure – metaphorical and literal – of certain groups.

Sulter's project challenged traditional representations of the Muses, and questioned the exclusion of Black women from historical narratives of art and culture. Her work is a powerful reminder of the enduring significance of the Muses and their ability to inspire new generations of artists to reimagine, reinterpret and confront longstanding cultural symbols.

Dr Louisa McKenzie, art historian based at the Warburg Institute, London

This content was funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation