Acis and Galatea

In 1628 Poussin, a Frenchman who had been in Rome for only about four years, won his first public commission, an altarpiece for St Peter's. This canvas comes from the same moment and shows the other half of his work then, a mythology for a collector's room. The story is from Ovid. The giant Polyphemus loves the sea nymph Galatea, and here he sits on the rock above, playing his pipes for her, while below she lies in the arms of the young shepherd Acis under a red cloth that cupids hold up. On the right, tritons and nereids tumble in the waves. The lovers have not been seen yet. In Ovid, when the giant finds them, he hurls a piece of the mountain at Acis, and the dead youth is turned into a river. The painting was in England by 1750 and came to Dublin in 1918 with the bequest of Sir Hugh Lane, the gallery's director, who had drowned in the sinking of the Lusitania.