The Nurture of Bacchus

Poussin painted this story twice in his early years in Rome, around 1626, and the two canvases differ mainly on one side. In the version now in the National Gallery in London, that side has a goat. Here there is a sleeping nymph, naked, with a small child asleep against her, while the goat is pushed behind them and teased by another child. The rest is the same scene. The infant Bacchus, raised by nymphs and satyrs, drinks from a cup while a satyr raises grapes over him, and two small boys embrace in the background. For the figures Poussin drew on ancient Roman sarcophagi and on two bacchanals by Titian that had been in a Roman collection since 1621. In 1671 the painting was sold to Louis XIV, and by 1695 it hung in the apartment of his son, the Grand Dauphin, at Versailles.