Marine Gods Paying Homage to Love

Classically proportioned sea gods and goddesses, partially clad in intensely colored drapery, form a dramatic procession against a light blue sky, illustrating an episode from Francesco Colonna’s *Hypnerotomachia Poliphili* (Strife of Love in a Dream of Polyphilus), the extravagant Renaissance tale of a dream-journey through antiquity. To the left the lovers Polyphilus and Polia are ferried to Cythera, the island of love; the sea goddess Amphitrite, reclining in a shell at the lower right, and Neptune, seated high on a shell and holding his trident, watch the boat depart from amid a crowd of figures. Eustache Le Sueur, the great classicizing painter of mid-century Paris, set the scene with the gravity and grace that made him a founder of the Académie Royale. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.