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Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · Hover to magnify, click for fullscreen
Original filePan reaches out with grasping hands toward Syrinx, whose legs and torso are already merging into thick stalks of reeds. To the left, the river god Ladon reclines by a flowing urn while other nymphs watch from the water, and the background depicts a marshy landscape rendered with intricate, swelling engraving lines. The scene captures the exact moment of physical metamorphosis, a hallmark of late 16th-century Dutch art.
Illustrating Ovid's Metamorphoses, this work reflects the Renaissance obsession with transformation and the underlying unity of nature. In Neoplatonic thought, Pan represented the 'All' or the totality of the natural world, and his pursuit of the nymph was often allegorized as the tension between material desire and the elusive, musical harmony of the soul.
Pana fugit Syrinx ripam Ladonis ad vdam, Dumq[ue] fugit numen fluminis orat opem Vertitur in calamum resonantis arundinis, hunc Pan Clangentem dulci flamine semper amat.
Translation
Pan flees Syrinx to the moist bank of the Ladon, And while she flees, she prays to the river deity for aid; She is turned into a reed of sounding stalk, this Pan Ever loves, ringing with sweet breath.
Ovid, Metamorphoses
This engraving is an illustration of Book I of Ovid's poem, a foundational text for Renaissance natural philosophy and allegory.
Francis Bacon
In his 'De Sapientia Veterum', Bacon interprets the myth of Pan as an allegory for the secrets of nature and the origins of natural philosophy.
Object
Engraving
mythological
Digital Source
Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Image: http://collections.lacma.org/sites/default/files/remote_images/piction/ma-31885629-O3.jpg Gallery: http://collections.lacma.org/node/238160 archive copy at the Wayback Machine
Public domain
2100 × 1452 px
cd66dd18d2b5394c89fb8096259774175c734d7f
July 19, 2013
March 23, 2026
Linked Data
AI AI-cataloged fields generated by gemini-3-flash-preview on April 1, 2026. Getty identifiers are AI-inferred and may require verification.