Midas se lavant à la source du Pactole

Poussin had not long arrived in Rome when he painted this, around 1627, a French artist of about 33 who had walked much of the way to Italy to study its antiquities. The subject is the end of the King Midas story. Having wished that all he touched turn to gold, and then found he could not eat or drink, Midas begs to be freed of the gift, and Bacchus, the god of wine, tells him to wash it off in the river Pactolus. Poussin gives the scene to a calm reclining river god while Midas kneels behind, small and chastened, and two child-spirits pour water. The Greeks told the tale to explain something real: the Pactolus, in what is now Turkey, once ran with grains of gold, the source of a nearby kingdom's fabled wealth. This was among the first paintings to enter the Metropolitan Museum, back in 1871.