[Statue of Atlas at Santiago de Compostela]
[Photographed by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez, Source: Wikimedia Commons]
Atlas fought against the Olympians with the other Titans and was defeated along with the rest of them. Unlike the rest of them, he was not confined to Tartarus afterwards. Instead, Zeus had him stand at the western edge of Gaia to hold Uranos on his shoulders and keep them apart. In other words, he is perpetually stuck between his grandparents.
[Atlas, Centerpiece of the Water Theater at Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati]
[Photographed by me]
I’m no art historian, but I’d guess that in that picture there the water falling out of the sphere, over Atlas, and onto the ground represents rain falling from the sky. This particular statue, by the way, comes from the Villa Aldobrandini, built in the mid 1500s. Rich people building gardens during what we call the Italian Renaissance liked to include references to Herakles and his encounter with Atlas because it allowed them to compare their own property to the Garden of the Hesperides.
Unsurprisingly, that reference is less common nowadays. And no, those books full of maps are not named after him. The Atlantic Ocean is, though. And so is this: