Hylas and the Water Nymphs

Both the rough, tinted paper and the technique help to distinguish this drawing from the vast majority of Thorvaldsen’s other drawings. But the character and locality of the scene are still more unusual. There otherwise exist only a small number of landscapes or architectural drawings by Thorvaldsen. Here we see the young Prince Hylas and the nymphs deep in the forest, as is recounted in Apollonius’s Voyage of the Argonauts and Theocritus’s Idylls.