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| Water deities |
| Waternymphs |
Acis and Galatea (/ˈeɪsɪs/,/ɡæləˈtiː.ə/[1][2]) are characters fromGreek mythology later associated together inOvid'sMetamorphoses. The episode tells of the love between the mortal Acis and theNereid (sea-nymph)Galatea; when the jealousCyclopsPolyphemus kills Acis, Galatea transforms her lover into an immortal river spirit. The episode was made the subject of poems, operas, paintings, and statues in theRenaissance and after.
Galathea or Galatea (Ancient Greek:Γαλάτεια,lit. 'she who is milk-white'),[3][4] the "glorious" and "comely" daughter of the "Old Man of the Sea"Nereus and theOceanidDoris, was a sea-nymph anciently attested in the work of bothHomer andHesiod, where she is described as the fairest and most beloved of the 50Nereids.[5] According toTheocritus (Idylls 6 and 11), she aroused the love of a most improbable suitor, theSicilian CyclopsPolyphemus. Her name is also mentioned several times byVirgil.[6]
InOvid'sMetamorphoses,[7] Galatea appears as the beloved of Acis, the son ofFaunus and theriver-nymph Symaethis, daughter of theRiverSymaethus. One day, when Galatea was lying beside the sea with her lover, Polyphemus saw them. The latter, in his jealousy, tore an enormous boulder out of the side ofMt. Etna and hurled it at Acis, crushing him to death.[8][7] Galatea then turned his blood into sparkling waters as it trickled from under the rock, so creating the stream on Etna that bore his name, the Sicilian riverAcis. She turned her lover himself into the horned god of the stream. He retained his original features except that he was larger and his face a deep blue.[7]
This version of the tale now occurs nowhere earlier than in Ovid's work and might perhaps have been a fiction invented by the poet, "suggested by the manner in which the little river springs forth from under a rock."[9] But according to the Greek scholarAthenaeus, the story was first concocted byPhiloxenus of Cythera as a political satire against the Sicilian tyrantDionysius I of Syracuse, whose favourite concubine, Galatea, shared her name with the nymph.[10] Others claim that the story was invented to explain the presence of a shrine dedicated to Galatea on Mount Etna.[11]
According to a later tradition, Galatea eventually yielded to Polyphemus' embraces. Their son,Galas or Galates, became the ancestor of theGauls.[12] The Hellenistic historianTimaeus, who was of Sicilian birth, described Galates as a son of Polyphemos and Galateia.[13]
Galatea, together withDoto andPanope, escorted her sisterThetis out of the sea to her wedding withPeleus.[14] InHomer'sIliad, Galatea and her other sisters appear toThetis when she cries out in sympathy for the grief ofAchilles at the slaying of his friendPatroclus.[15]
DuringRenaissance andBaroque times the story emerged once more as a popular theme. In Spain,Luis de Góngora wrote the narrative poem,Fábula dePolifemo y Galatea, published in 1627. It is particularly noted for its depiction of landscape and for the sensual description of the love of Acis and Galatea.[16] The poem was written in homage to an earlier narrative with the same title by Luis Carillo y Sotomayor (1611)[17] The story was also given operatic treatment in azarzuela written byAntonio de Literes (1708).
In France,Jean-Baptiste Lully wrote the operaAcis et Galatée (1686) which was about the Greek myth.[18] Described by him as a pastoral-heroic work, it depicts alove triangle between the three main characters—Acis, Galatea, and Poliphème. Poliphème murders Acis out of jealousy, but Acis is revived and turned into a river byNeptune. In ItalyGiovanni Bononcini's one-act operaPolifemo followed in 1703.[19]
Shortly afterwardsGeorge Frideric Handel composed the cantataAci, Galatea e Polifemo (1708).[20] After Handel's move to England, he gave the story a new treatment in hispastoral operaAcis and Galatea with an English libretto provided byJohn Gay.[21] Initially composed in 1718, the work went through many revisions and was later to be given updated orchestrations by bothMozart andMendelssohn. As a pastoral work where Polyphemus plays only a minor part, it largely focuses on the two lovers.
While staying in London,Nicola Porpora composed the operaPolifemo which features Acis and Galatea as well as the former's encounter with Polyphemus. In Austria later in the century,Joseph Haydn composedAcide e Galatea (1763).[22] Designed for an imperial wedding, it was given a happier ending centered on the transformation scene after the murder of Acis as the pair declare their undying love.[23]
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Paintings featuring Acis and Galatea can be grouped according to their themes. Most notably the story takes place within a pastoral landscape in which the figures are almost incidental. This is particularly so in Nicolas Poussin'sLandscape with Polyphemus (1649)(Hermitage Museum) andClaude Lorrain's seaside landscape (Dresden) of 1657, in both of which the lovers play a minor part in the foreground. In an earlier painting by Poussin (National Gallery of Ireland, 1630) the couple is among several embracing figures in the foreground, shielded from view of Polyphemus, who is playing his flute higher up the slope.[citation needed]
In all of these Polyphemus is somewhere in the background, but many others feature Galatea alone, as inPerino del Vaga's painting of her being drawn by sea beasts over the waves while riding on a seashell.[24] Generally, though, the nymph is carried through the sea by adoring attendants in paintings generally titledThe Triumph of Galatea, of which the most renowned treatment is byRaphael. In general these follow the 3rd-century description given of such a painting byPhilostratus the Younger in hisImagines:[25]
The nymph sports on the peaceful sea, driving a team of four dolphins yoked together and working in harmony; and maiden-daughters ofTriton, Galatea's servants, guide them, curving them in if they try to do anything mischievous or contrary to the rein. She holds over her heads against the wind a light scarf of sea-purple to provide a shade for herself and a sail for her chariot, and from it a kind of radiance falls upon her forehead and her head, though no white more charming than the bloom on her cheek; her hair is not tossed by the breeze, for it is so moist that it is proof against the wind. And lo, her right elbow stands out and her white forearm is bent back, while she rests her fingers on her delicate shoulder, and her arms are gently rounded, and her breasts project, nor yet is beauty lacking in her thigh. Her foot, with the graceful part that ends in it, is painted as on the sea and it lightly touches the water as if it were the rudder guiding her chariot. Her eyes are wonderful, for they have a kind of distant look that travels as far as the sea extends.
In those cases where the rejected lover Polyphemus appears somewhere ashore, the division between them is emphasised by their being identified with their respective elements, sea, and land. Typical examples of this were painted byFrancois Perrier,[26]Giovanni Lanfranco[27] andJean-Baptiste van Loo.
Sensual portrayals of the lovers embracing in a landscape were provided by French painters especially, as in those byCharles de La Fosse (c. 1700),Jean-François de Troy,[28] and Alexandre Charles Guillemot (1827).[29] Polyphemus lurks in the background of these and in the example by De Troy his presence plainly distresses Galatea. Other French examples byAntoine Jean Gros (1833)[30] andÉdouard Zier (1877) show the lovers hiding in a cave and peering anxiously out at him.
They anticipate the tragic moment when he looms menacingly over the pair, having discovered the truth they have tried to conceal. The threat is as apparent inJean-Francois de Troy's softly outlined 18th-century vision[31] as it is inOdilon Redon's almost Surrealist painting of 1900. The brooding atmosphere in these suggests the violent action which is to follow. That had been portrayed in earlier paintings of Polyphemus casting a rock at the fleeing lovers, such as those byAnnibale Carracci,[32]Auger Lucas [fr],[33] andCarle van Loo.[34]
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![Galatea at the head of the Galatea water well [de], Stuttgart](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aGalateabrunnen2.JPG)
Statues of Galatea, sometimes in the company of Acis, began to be made in Europe from the 17th century. There is a fanciful description of a fountain that incorporates them both inJohn Barclay's Latin novelArgenis, dating from 1621:
Being drawn to the top of the fountain, the water passed through many pipes in various forms, then falling into the cistern beneath, it boiled with the force of its falling and waxed green like the sea. In the midst whereof, Galatea, as in the sea, bewailed her newly dead Acis, who lay on the shore, and as if he now began to be dissolved into a river, he sent forth two streams, one at his mouth, the other at his wound.[35]
Common features of statues depicting Galatea include, one raised hand holding a billowing scarf; sea imagery, including shells, dolphins and tritons; and often the fact that the statue is incorporated into a fountain. In the work by Gabriel de Grupello in the castle park atSchwetzingen, the triton at Galatea's feet holds up a garland threaded with shells and pearls. The Galatea in the grounds ofTsarskoye Selo in Russia has sea pearls threaded into her hair. There is also a statue of her byNicola Michetti that forms part of the cascade at thePeterhof Palace inSt Petersburg. These features can help distinguish statues of Galatea from the Galatea involved in the myth ofPygmalion.[citation needed]
One statue by a pool in the public gardens ofAcireale, the Sicilian town where the transformation of Acis is supposed to have taken place, depicts Acis lying beneath the boulder that has killed him while Galatea crouches to one side. She has raised an arm to heaven in supplication.[36] Another statue sculpted byJean-Baptiste Tuby is located in the Bosquet des Dômes in theVersailles gardens. The statue depicts Acis leaning on a rock, playing the flute, as the half-clad Galatea comes upon him with hands lifted in surprise (1667–75). A similar gesture is displayed in the statue of her alone in the fountain to the right of the great staircase atChâteau de Chantilly. The lovers are portrayed together as part of the Medici Fountain in theLuxembourg Garden in Paris. Designed byAuguste Ottin in 1866, the marble group embrace inside a grotto while above them is crouched a huge Polyphemus in weathered bronze, peering down in jealousy.[citation needed]
The nymph reclines on a large shell carried by tritons in the 18th-century fountain at the Villa Borromeo Visconti Litta inMilan. It is on the back of a dolphin that she reclines in the statue by the 19th-century Italian sculptor Leopoldo Ansiglioni (1832–1894). There are two versions of this, one at the centre of a fish pool in the East House of theUniversity of Greenwich's Winter Gardens,[37] and a later copy installed atHearst Castle in California.[38] In this, one of the arms bent back to support her head is encircled by the dolphin's tail. There is also a German fountain byKarl Friedrich Moest now installed inKarlsruhe in which Galatea sits on the back of a triton. Over her head she balances the huge shell from which the water pours. Another statue was erected at the head of an impressive cascade inStuttgart's Eugenplatz.[39] A work of Otto Rieth (1858–1911) dating from 1890 features the nymph crowned with seaweed and surging up from the dolphin and youngcupids playing at her feet. In the applied arts, three-dimensional representations of Raphael's triumph theme were often incorporated into artifacts for aristocratic use and were painted onmajolica ware.
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Acis".Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
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