El reino de Flora

Poussin painted this in Rome around 1631, a French artist making his name among the antiquarians and collectors of the papal city. He gathered into a single garden a crowd of figures from Ovid who each, in dying, turned into a flower. Narcissus bends over a bowl of water, still in love with his own reflection. Ajax leans on his sword above a white carnation that his blood will soon redden. At the centre Flora, the flower goddess, scatters blooms and dances. Every gesture here is the instant just before a death, arranged as a bright spring garden. Overhead the sun god drives his chariot across the sky, marking the single day the whole story spans.