The Birth of Bacchus
Nicolas Poussin, 1657
For now, just to look at
The photograph we have of this work is not sharp enough to print at the quality we want, so we are not selling it for now. We are looking for a better one.
About the work
- Artist
- Nicolas Poussin
- Date
- 1657
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Collection
- Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (Massachusetts)
- Reference
- XDV-3280
What the museum label doesn't tell you
Look at where Poussin puts the emotional weight: not on the infant being handed to the nymphs, but on the body slumped by the water's edge, half out of frame, blue cloth sliding off his torso. That's Narcissus dead -the painting's compound title literally pairs 'Birth of Bacchus' with 'Death of Echo and Narcissus' in one canvas. A woman weeps over him at the right, unnoticed by the revelers. Poussin stages a god's birth and a mortal's death in the same space without theatrical gestures -the contrast lives in the distance between the two groups, not in anyone's face. Which scene do you think actually anchors the composition?
