Orpheus and Eurydice

Most painters who took up the Orpheus story reached for its triumph, the musician whose playing softened the rulers of the dead into giving his wife back. Around 1620 Padovanino chose the harder instant instead, the second loss. Orpheus had been allowed to lead Eurydice back toward the light on one condition, that he never look behind him on the climb, and here he has just turned. Her gaze is already sliding away toward her fate, one foot back in the dark where the flames of the underworld burn. The embrace the two of them are breaking is the last time they touch. It hangs in Room 16 of the Accademia beside another of his underworld scenes.