Salmacis and Hermaphroditus

The pool in this tiny landscape belongs to the nymph Salmacis. In Ovid's Metamorphoses the youth Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, stops to bathe in it. She falls in love, he refuses her, and when he goes into the water she wraps herself around him and begs the gods never to let them part. They become one body, both man and woman. Albani paints the moment before. Salmacis, half wrapped in blue, watches from the bank while he undresses.

The copper plate is only 14 centimetres high, and the Louvre dates it no closer than the late 16th or early 17th century. It belonged to Louis XIV, and from 1715 to 1736 it was in the Paris house of the duc d'Antin, a son of Madame de Montespan, who ran the royal buildings and had several of the crown's pictures hung in his own rooms.