Athena, take care of me.

Here she is, steady, wearing a simple tunic, in front of a stela. Her right hand is on her hip while the left one hold a spear against her forehead. A helmet with a crest covers her head. One of her foot, probably the right one, is entirely on the floor, but the other one, with the held up heel, is only supported by the extremity of her foot.

It seems like she is reading something written on the stela or thinking and meditating. If we weren't sure it was Athena - but her helmet and spear leave no doubts - we could see an Athenian woman meditating at some parent's grave. We are not sure, as her position is so natural, whether the dominating feeling is melancholy or lassitude. She looks like absorbed by her thoughts and, on the contrary to the numerous other representations, virgin warrior or Olympian sovereign, she appears here surprisingly human.
This is not the kind of representation that is given in books about mythology. We prefer picturing her as the glorious Athena, born from the head of Zeus, holding the great Aegis with the head of Medusa, given by Perseus after he killed her. But this more simple Athena, this mourning Athena is the way I prefer picturing the Goddess. I've grown up under her shadow during my high school years, reading every book I could find about her and the Olympian Gods. She sometimes whispered me lots of secrets about the difficult art of charming humans thanks to the light of wisdom and not by the attraction of the body.

There is always something moving about seeing the Gods during their hours of weakness and doubts. I know that I'm saying things that haven't crossed the artist's mind. He has surely only though to his contemporaries, to his own desire to represent the Goddess. But the hand on the hip, the help up heel, the finder on the forehead, testify an unusual vision of Athena, fragile and familiar silhouette.
Let's think about it : the Goddess has come here from the sky to us, taking the appearance of a simple mortal. Is it about this question that she is thinking? About death, this end ignored by the Gods? Yes, is it this question that astonish or worry her? This mystery that the Gods will never know and that is, I could say, the privilege of humans?