Ovid among the Scythians

The man in blue lies among people bringing him food and milk. A mare is milked nearby, while other figures watch or approach across the land. Their care gives the scene its subject, even though the landscape occupies much of the picture. The visitor is Ovid, the Roman poet who wrote Metamorphoses, a collection of stories about transformation. Emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis on the Black Sea in AD 8. Delacroix imagines the kindness he receives far from Rome. Eugène Delacroix, a French painter, made this large version in 1859. A smaller treatment of the subject followed in 1862 and is now in New York. The London painting should be read as its own composition, with figures distributed across the landscape in a rhythm recalling a classical frieze. Follow the space between the small groups. Their scattered activities connect the reclining poet to the surrounding country without turning it into a crowded narrative. The story’s displaced traveller is met through practical gestures of hospitality.