The Infant Bacchus Entrusted to the Nymphs of Nysa; The Death of Echo and Narcissus

Poussin was a French expatriate resident in Rome for most of his career. His insistence on the primacy of form and theme over color and painterly effects made him the preeminent exponent of a severe, stoic classicism. His ideas and methods were so admired that they became the model for European art academies. This painting was commissioned in 1657 by his friend and fellow painter Jacques Stella, whose Liberality of Titus also hangs in this gallery. Poussin’s picture elaborates themes drawn from classical sources, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Euripides’s Bacchae, Philostratus’s Imagines, and later scholarly commentaries to produce a dense allegory of human destiny. The main theme visualizes the birth and secret nurturing of Bacchus by the nymphs of Nysa. Fertility (Bacchus) and sterility (Narcissus and Echo) are represented through a visual meditation on the character of a specific natural and sacred site — Nysa — in the ancient Greek city-state of Thebes.