Читать книгу A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools - National Gallery (Great Britain) - Страница 79

NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES
62. A BACCHANALIAN DANCE

Nicolas Poussin (French: 1593-1665). See 39.

This picture, one of Poussin's masterpieces, is probably one of four Bacchanals painted for Cardinal Richelieu: —

Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs! whence came ye,

So many, and so many, and such glee?

Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left

Your nuts in oak-tree cleft? —

"For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree;

For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,

And cold mushrooms;

For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth;

Great god of breathless cups and chirping mirth!

Come hither, lady fair, and joined be

To our mad minstrelsy!"

Keats: Endymion.