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Marine Gods Paying Homage to Love (Main View)

Eustache Le Sueur

The J. Paul Getty Museum

The J. Paul Getty Museum
Los Angeles, United States

Classically proportioned sea gods and goddesses, partially clad in intensely colored drapery, form a dramatic procession against a light blue sky. This painting illustrates an episode in Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Strife of Love in a Dream of Polyphilus), an extravagant Renaissance tale of a dream-journey through antiquity. To the left, the lovers Polyphilus and Polia are ferried to Cythera, the island of love. The sea goddess Amphitrite, reclining in a shell at the lower right, and Neptune, seated high on a shell and holding his triton, watch the boat depart from amid a crowd of figures.



Although it was first published in 1499, Colonna's book enjoyed immense popularity in seventeenth-century France. Marine Gods Paying Homage to Love is one of Eustache Le Sueur's eight canvases illustrating the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili; it was painted as a model for a Gobelins tapestry that was never executed.

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