DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE

[Ink and Pantone markers on A3 paper, background and editing in Photoshop CS6]
Theme: Sailor Moon

Sailor Venus and Sailor Saturn are my two favourite Sailor Soldiers, that's why I wanted to draw them together.
I thought about what could link them and I figured out that they could represent the cycle of season and life and death in general.
At once, the myth of Demeter and Persephone came to my mind.

Venus is love, fertility and prosperity, but it also reminds me of nature's rebirth in spring and summer (in "Golden Sun" videogame, Venus is the Earth Element). Demeter is the harvest goddess who also presides over sacred laws and the cycle of life and death.
Saturn is a powerful and destroying force, associated with death but also with agriculture (that's the double meaning of the scythe). Persephone is Demeter's daughter, abducted by Hades to become his consort, and so destined to spend six months a year as the queen of the underworld, and the remaining six with her mother.

I drew this also thinking about Dante's Divina Commedia, in particular a passage in the Purgatory (Canto III), in which Virgil thinks with his head bowed, while Dante reflects with his head up, looking at the sky, symbolizing their two different fates (respectively, limbo and salvation). In the same way, Sailor Saturn is all inclined downwards, symbolizing death, while Sailor Venus is reaching upwards, representing rebirth and life.