Giulio Carpioni Venice 1613 - 1678

The river nymph Liriope gave birth to a beautiful child whom she named Narcissus, and here she is shown taking her son to the blind seer Tiresias to enquire about his destiny. Tiresias pronounced that he would live a long life as long as he did not "come to know himself" but Narcissus famously wasted away after he fell in love with his own reflection. The tale, as recounted by Ovid in his Metamorphoses (Book III: verses 339-510), concludes with Narcissus' death and the transformation of his body into a flower, which to this day still bears his name.

A painting of the same subject, in which Liriope and the baby Narcissus are in similar poses, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (G.M. Pilo, Carpioni, Venice 1961, p. 126, reproduced fig. 184). A second variant of the Vienna picture is in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (Pilo, op. cit., p. 113) and a third painting of the same subject is in a private collection in Vicenza (M. Binotto, in La pittura nel Veneto. Il Seicento, Milan 2000, vol. I, reproduced p. 305, fig. 384). The present work is on a much larger scale than the other three representations and whilst these have been dated to the last decade of Carpioni's activity, it is likely that this canvas slightly pre-dates them.