Pan pursuing Syrinx

The myth of Pan and Syrinx captivated Flemish painters of the early seventeenth century as an ideal vehicle for combining landscape, mythology, and the female nude. Hendrick van Balen the Elder, working in Antwerp around 1615, painted the subject on copper — a support favoured for small-format cabinet pictures destined for learned collectors. The story, drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses, describes the river nymph Syrinx fleeing the lustful pursuit of the god Pan until she is transformed into hollow reeds at the river's edge, from which Pan fashions his pipe. Van Balen was a close collaborator of Jan Brueghel the Elder, and works like this one frequently united Van Balen's elegant figure painting with Brueghel's landscape passages, though this panel's landscape may be entirely Van Balen's own hand. The National Gallery's acquisition speaks to the painting's high quality and its appeal to later connoisseurs drawn to the refined Flemish cabinet tradition. The copper support allows for extreme precision of touch and a jewel-like luminosity characteristic of the Antwerp small-format school.

The copper support gives the paint film a glass-smooth foundation that permits miniature-like detail in both figures and foliage. Van Balen's flesh tones are built up in thin, translucent glazes, achieving a porcelain delicacy. The landscape setting is handled with the feathery, stippled touch associated with collaborations between Antwerp figure and landscape specialists.