Piero di Cosimo, 'A Satyr mourning over a Nymph', about 1495. London, The National Gallery.

Piero di Cosimo, 'A Satyr mourning over a Nymph'

Charles Saumarez Smith and curator Caroline Campbell consider what this mysterious painting might be about.

Transcript

Charles Saumarez Smith
When this painting was made around five hundred years ago, it served a very specific purpose. It wasn't made for an art gallery, but for a family home, where it decorated either a wall, or perhaps even a piece of furniture, like a headboard of a bed or backboard of a bench.

Paintings like this one were normally bought at the time of a marriage and they often had a message for the newly-wed couple. I asked former curator Caroline Campbell to talk us through this scene.

Caroline Campbell
"The story of this painting is quite enigmatic, but it's good just to concentrate on what we actually see and then think about what this means.

So in the centre of the panel, there is a very beautiful, young girl who's semi-clothed..., and initially, you think she's just asleep but then you notice there's blood coming out of her throat - she's actually dead, and she's being mourned by this strange satyr or fawn who's at the top next to her head on the left-hand side of the painting".

Charles Saumarez Smith
The girl may be Procris, a nymph who thought her husband was cheating on her. She followed him out hunting one day and hid in the bushes to spy on him.

When he heard the sound of rustling leaves, he mistook her for an animal, and killed her with his spear. I asked Caroline what this story might have meant for the newly-weds who owned it in the 15th century.

Caroline Campbell
"...I think a story, like this, showing a dead nymph, who is dead because she wasn't sure of her husband's fidelity, is a warning for women, Florentine women looking at this painting, to never doubt their husbands in anything and to always believe that he is right, because of course, that was the premise on which marriage, in theory anyway, in the 15th century was based".

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