The sculpture was initially part of a temporary exhibition of the work of Gloucestershire based artist Sophie Ryder at the Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery and it was created in 1995. The overwhelming public response to the exhibition fuelled the campaign to retain one of Sophie Ryder’s sculptures and the Hare and Minotaur was acquired by public subscription in 1998.
Sophie Ryder’s work focuses on mythical creatures and hybrids, often hares combined with human features. Her most known piece is the Lady Hare, a hare with a female body, and this creation came about when she was looking for a companion for the minotaur.
The Minotauros (or Minotaur) was a bull-headed monster born to Queen Pasiphae of Krete after she had coupled with a bull.
The creature resided in the twisting maze of the labyrinth, where he was offfered a regular sacrifice of youths and maids to satisfy his cannibalistic hunger. He was eventually destroyed by the hero Theseus.
The Minotauros' proper name Asterion, "the starry one," suggests he was associated with the constellation Tauros.
Minotauros (Minôtauros), a monster with a human body and a bull's head, or, according to others, with the body of an ox and a human head; is said to have been the offspring of the intercourse of Pasiphaë with the bull sent from the sea to Minos, who shut him up in the Cnossian labyrinth, and fed him with the bodies of the youths and maidens whom the Athenians at fixed times were obliged to send to Minos as tribute. The monster was slain by Theseus. It was often represented by ancient artists either alone in the labyrinth, or engaged in the struggle with Theseus.
"Minos aspired to the throne [of Krete], but was rebuffed. He claimed, however, that he had received the sovereignty from the gods, and to prove it he said that whatever he prayed for would come about. So while sacrificing to Poseidon, he prayed for a bull to appear from the depths of the sea, and promised to sacrifice it upon its appearance. And Poseidon did send up to him a splendid bull. Thus Minos received the rule, but he sent the bull to his herds and sacrificed another . . . Poseidon was angry that the bull was not sacrificed, and turned it wild. He also devised that Pasiphae should develop a lust for it. In her passion for the bull she took on as her accomplice an architect named Daidalos . . . He built a woden cow on wheels, . . . skinned a real cow, and sewed the contraption into the skin, and then, after placing Pasiphae inside, set it in a meadow where the bull normally grazed. The bull came up and had intercourse with it, as if with a real cow. Pasiphae gave birth to Asterios, who was called Minotauros. He had the face of a bull, but was otherwise human. Minos, following certain oracular instructions, kept him confined and under guard in the labyrinth. This labyrinth, which Daidalos built, was a “cage with convoluted flextions that disorders debouchment."