Narcissus gazing at his reflection

Pier Francesco Mola
1640-1645

This splendid painting, acquired before 1978, is one of a series of six featuring Narcissus at a poolside in eventide; the oldest of the series is on view at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Mola favoured this subject because it afforded him the opportunity to portray this sorrowful figure a romantic landscape imbued with a lyrical and elegiac atmosphere. Narcissus is depicted lying almost prone on a shady grass knoll gazing abstractedly at the deceptive image melting away before his eyes. He is raising himself to gesture at the surrounding greenery, as though asking “Oh trees, does any suffer a crueller love than I?”

Most of the paintings in this series feature a larger than life Narcissus occupying a quarter to a third of the frame. Here the bowed figure is shown face-on gazing at his own reflection in the water; his right arm is extended in a surprised gesture and his knees graze the ground. To the left an enormous, dark, leafy tree rises. Beneath its boughs in the background stands a dead tree trunk.