Waking the gods: how the classical world cast its spell over British art

Dod Procter’s painting of a girl on the brink of waking echoes an ancient statue of Ariadne – and is just one example of a postwar revival in classical imagery. Why did antique references mean so much to shellshocked Britain?Of all the antique sculptures that were rediscovered in the Renaissance, and which infused and possessed the imaginations of later generations of artists, it is hard to think of one more powerful than the statue of the sleeping Ariadne in the Pio Clementino museu