Bacchanal of Putti with a Goat Cart

Roman sculptors liked to fill the sides of sarcophagi with small boys playing at the rites of Bacchus, the wine god, rites which on a tomb spoke of the life to come. In 1626 Poussin, two years into his life in Rome, lifted that stone world into colour. This is the smaller of two companion pictures. The children wind a garland round a pillar crowned with carved heads and haul a goat towards a little cart heaped with masks. The art historian Anthony Blunt traced the picture to those reliefs, pointing to the strict bas-relief pattern that keeps every child in a shallow band across the front. Both canvases are painted in gouache and tempera as well as oil. By 1666, while a Chigi sat on the papal throne as Alexander VII, the pair was listed in the family's inventories, and it stayed with the Chigi until 1914.