Acis and Galatea
'she who is milk-white'),[3][4] the "glorious" and "comely" daughter of the "Old Man of the Sea" Nereus and the Oceanid Doris, was a sea-nymph anciently attested in the work of both Homer and Hesiod, where she is described as the fairest and most beloved of the 50 Nereids.
[8][7] Galatea then turned his blood into sparkling waters as it trickled from under the rock, so creating the stream on Etna that bore his name, the Sicilian river Acis.
[7] This version of the tale now occurs nowhere earlier than in Ovid's work and might perhaps have been a fiction invented by the poet, "suggested by the manner in which the little river springs forth from under a rock.
"[9] But according to the Greek scholar Athenaeus, the story was first concocted by Philoxenus of Cythera as a political satire against the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, whose favourite concubine, Galatea, shared her name with the nymph.
[20] After Handel's move to England, he gave the story a new treatment in his pastoral opera Acis and Galatea with an English libretto provided by John Gay.
[22] Designed for an imperial wedding, it was given a happier ending centered on the transformation scene after the murder of Acis as the pair declare their undying love.
In an earlier painting by Poussin (National Gallery of Ireland, 1630) the couple is among several embracing figures in the foreground, shielded from view of Polyphemus, who is playing his flute higher up the slope.
[citation needed] In all of these Polyphemus is somewhere in the background, but many others feature Galatea alone, as in Perino del Vaga's painting of her being drawn by sea beasts over the waves while riding on a seashell.
In general these follow the 3rd-century description given of such a painting by Philostratus the Younger in his Imagines:[25] The nymph sports on the peaceful sea, driving a team of four dolphins yoked together and working in harmony; and maiden-daughters of Triton, Galatea's servants, guide them, curving them in if they try to do anything mischievous or contrary to the rein.
And lo, her right elbow stands out and her white forearm is bent back, while she rests her fingers on her delicate shoulder, and her arms are gently rounded, and her breasts project, nor yet is beauty lacking in her thigh.
That had been portrayed in earlier paintings of Polyphemus casting a rock at the fleeing lovers, such as those by Annibale Carracci,[32] Auger Lucas [fr],[33] and Carle van Loo.
In the midst whereof, Galatea, as in the sea, bewailed her newly dead Acis, who lay on the shore, and as if he now began to be dissolved into a river, he sent forth two streams, one at his mouth, the other at his wound.
In the work by Gabriel de Grupello in the castle park at Schwetzingen, the triton at Galatea's feet holds up a garland threaded with shells and pearls.
Designed by Auguste Ottin in 1866, the marble group embrace inside a grotto while above them is crouched a huge Polyphemus in weathered bronze, peering down in jealousy.
There are two versions of this, one at the centre of a fish pool in the East House of the University of Greenwich's Winter Gardens,[37] and a later copy installed at Hearst Castle in California.
[39] A work of Otto Rieth (1858–1911) dating from 1890, it features the nymph crowned with seaweed and surging up from the dolphin and young cupids playing at her feet.
