Landscape with Dancing Satyrs and Nymphs

The flower-crowned god Pan sits with a beautiful nymph accompanied by three maids in the right foreground, watching the half goat-half man satyrs and nymphs dance. A young satyr dances with a goat in the center and all are enclosed in Lorrain's distinctively ebullient, pastoral nature. The right half of the picture plane is lost in the green shade of small hills, while the left part of the image stretches to the distant mountain range. The sky and clouds that spread above this open plane are filled with an Italianate clarity, providing an interesting contrast to the skies seen in the works of Lorrain's contemporary, van Goyen (see cat. no. 35). Lorrain collected a large number of sketches recording his own compositions in an album entitled Liber Veritatis (British Museum, London), and number 108 (1646-47) of these drawings repeats this same composition. From this evidence it has been concluded that this work was created under commission from the wealthy Lyonnaise merchant and humanist, Philippe Silvestre Dufourt. Lorrain rarely depicted this theme of satyrs and nymphs, indicating that Dufourt particularly requested this subject. Scholars have suggested that the work may have been commissioned upon the occasion of a wedding. (Source: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2009, cat. no. 41)