The French painter Claude Gellée spent most of his life in Rome, feasting his eyes on its landscapes and ruins and light. Here, he immerses your senses and imagination in a green Italian idyll caressed by golden sunshine. There’s a crumbling castle on a hilltop, sailing ships on the misty sea, a bridge over the river that cuts deep through velvet woods. In the foreground, a rustic pool is the setting for a scene from ancient mythology as Narcissus gazes in rapture at his own reflection, sentenced to fall in love with himself after he spurned the nymph Echo. But here, he seems to be rejecting a whole bunch of female admirers. Echo and another lovestruck woman watch him from the woods. In the foreground, a nude is trying to attract his attention by posing at the water’s edge. Still Narcissus has eyes only for his face in the water.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/