Pan et Syrinx

By 1637 Poussin had been living in Rome for over a decade, a Frenchman who had gone south to soak up antiquity and had made himself one of the most sought-after painters in the city. His clients were learned men who knew their Ovid, and this is a scene straight from the Metamorphoses. Pan, the goat-legged god of the wild, has chased the nymph Syrinx to a riverbank. She cannot escape and cannot bear him, so at the last instant she begs the river to turn her into reeds. Poussin catches exactly that instant, Pan lunging as the girl slips out of reach. What the god is left holding is a handful of rushes. From them, the old story says, he cut the first set of pipes, the panpipe that still carries her name.