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

The Infant Bacchus Entrusted to the Nymphs and the Death of Echo and Narcissus from 1657 at Harvard Art Museums is a late masterwork combining two Ovidian mythological narratives within a single landscape composition, one of the most ambitious and philosophically complex of Poussin's late works. The two stories share a setting in the natural world — the forest glade where Bacchus was raised, the pool where Narcissus died — and together create a meditation on nurture and self-destruction, on the vitality of Dionysian joy and the fatal paralysis of self-love. Poussin's mythological subjects drew on deep reading of ancient texts, and his late works achieved philosophical depth through the juxtaposition of contrasting narratives within unified landscape compositions. His late palette and measured handling create the philosophical gravity of his final decade. The Harvard Art Museums hold this as a major late Poussin, one of the most important examples of his mythological landscape painting in American collections.

The complex composition integrates two narratives within a single landscape. Poussin's late palette and measured handling create a scene of philosophical depth.