Nymphs Feeding the Child Jupiter

Follower of Nicolas Poussin

National Gallery of Art

Two men, four women, and a baby gather on and in front of a platform-like rock formation in a landscape in this horizontal painting. The people all have pale skin and delicate features. The women’s blond hair is pulled up and back over a headband, and the men have short, curly brown hair. The two men are in the lower left corner of the composition. One sits holding a staff and leaning back on the other hand. He is clean-shaven and nude except for an azure-blue cloth wrapping around one elbow and across his lap. The other man kneels on one knee and milks a goat. That man is bearded, wears a loose, golden-yellow toga, and reaches his other hand toward our right. There, one woman wearing lapis blue and butter yellow holds the pudgy, nude baby. Her legs are crossed to our left, but she turns her torso to our right to help the baby at her left hip drink something, presumably goat’s milk, from a horn. A second woman stands over this pair wearing pale peach and laurel green. This second woman hunches over and holds a honeycomb on a leaf, which catches the honey. The other two women are nude and recline on the rocky platform. The woman closer to us leans against a slender, overturned slate-blue urn with water trickling from its narrow opening. The first woman here drapes and arm across the shoulders of the second, who reclines next to her legs. An urn with a round belly and tall neck sits upright next to this second woman. Scrubby plants, willowy grasses, and two stubby trees grow from the rocky formation. Trees and hills in the background lead back to blue-shaded mountain on the horizon, which comes halfway up this composition. White and muted light brown clouds skirt across the blue sky above.