This picture, one of Poussin's masterpieces, is probably one of four Bacchanals painted for Cardinal Richelieu:—
Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs! whence came ye,
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left
Your nuts in oak-tree cleft?—
"For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree;
For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,
And cold mushrooms;
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth;
Great god of breathless cups and chirping mirth!
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
To our mad minstrelsy!"
Keats: Endymion.
63. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.
Annibale Carracci (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). See 9.
This picture was originally in the Giustiniani Palace at Rome; hence the figures are supposed to represent (as stated on the frame) Prince Giustiniani and his attendants returning from the chase.
64. RETURN OF THE ARK FROM CAPTIVITY.
Sebastien Bourdon (French: 1616-1671).
This picture was a great favourite with Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom it once belonged. He cited it, together with a picture by Salvator Rosa, to the students of the Academy (Discourse xiv.) as an instance of the "poetical style of landscape," calling particular attention to the "visionary" character of "the whole and every part of the scene." The subject is the return of the ark by the Philistines to the valley of Bath-shemesh, as described in I Samuel vi. 10-14. The painter was one of the original twelve anciens of the old French Academy of painting, of which he died rector; he had formerly been painter to Queen Christina of Sweden, to whose country he had fled as a Protestant.