The Triumph of Galatea

The Triumph of Galatea by Raphael, a fresco created around 1512 for the Villa Farnesina in Rome, depicts a later scene in the life of the Nereid, as Galatea triumphs in a shell chariot drawn by dolphins. In Greek mythology, Galatea (meaning “she who is white as milk”) is a sea nymph known as a Nereid. Although she had appeared in other classical Greek tales, the story of Galatea and Acis first appeared in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She falls in love with Acis, a handsome mortal shepherd who is the son of Faunus, god of the forest, and the river nymph Symaethis. Although her heart belongs to Acis, Galatea is also pursued by the Sicilian Cyclops Polyphemus. Enraged by Galatea and Acis’s affair, Polyphemus hurls a stone at Acis, killing him instantly. Blood then gushes from the stone, and the grief-stricken Galatea turns Acis’s blood into the Sicilian River Acis, where he is immortalized as a spirit. Although the fresco is inspired by the story of Acis and Galatea, Raphael did not choose a scene that shows the ill-fated lovers together. Instead, he portrayed Galatea as she achieves apotheosis, meaning that after death she would ascend to join the fully divine beings, rewarded for her patience and for enduring the trials and tribulations of her life. On the left side of the painting, a Triton, half man and half fish, abducts a sea nymph, while another blows a conch trumpet. The work is inspired by La Giostra (“the joust”), a poem by the poet Poliziano, who was a tutor to the Medici, the ruling family of Florence, and one of the great pan-European intellectuals of the era. He had begun writing La Giostra in honor of Giuliano de’ Medici’s victory in a tournament in 1475. He abandoned it three years later, after the Pazzi conspiracy, which attempted to overthrow the Medici as rulers of Florence; during it, Giuliano was stabbed to death during High Mass in the city’s Duomo. Poliziano saved Giuliano’s brother Lorenzo by locking him in the cathedral sacristy. Raphael’s fresco was commissioned for the Villa Farnesina by Agostino Chigi, an enormously wealthy Sienese banker who served as treasurer to Pope Julius II. He had the villa built in Rome’s Trastevere district by Baldassarre Peruzzi between 1506 and 1510. It was acquired in 1577 by the Farnese family, among whose members were Pope Paul III and Elisabeth Farnese, who became Queen of Spain in the early 18th century. The building, whose main attraction remains Raphael’s fresco, is open to the public. The Triumph of Galatea ranks No. 20 in the list of paintings famous