Rescue of Young King Pyrrhus

Plutarch could not say for certain how the message got across the river, so Poussin painted both versions. The story comes from his life of Pyrrhus, who grew up to be king of Epirus in northwestern Greece. When the boy's father was driven out by a revolt, around 317 BC, a few loyal men ran with the infant, pursuers behind them. At sunset they reached a river swollen with rain, and the people on the far bank could not hear them over the water. One of them scratched a plea onto a strip of bark with a clasp pin, wrapped it round a stone and threw it across. Some said it was tied to a javelin instead. At the left, one man is about to hurl a stone and the next holds a javelin, while in the middle the child is lifted up for the other side to see. Poussin painted this in Rome in 1634, and it went straight to Giovanni Maria Roscioli, a young cleric in the household of Pope Urban VIII.