Johann Liss, 'The Fall of Phaeton', about 1624

This dramatic scene is described by the Roman poet Ovid in book two of the Metamorphoses. Hurtling headlong from the sky through a cloud of orange smoke is Phaeton, son of the sun god Phoebus. He had persuaded his father to let him steer his chariot, which was led by fire-breathing horses, across the sky, but his reckless driving caused rivers to dry up and lands to become desert. Jupiter intervened to prevent further chaos, striking thunderbolts at the chariot and smashing it to pieces, casting Phaeton to his death.

A group of water nymphs, whose figures are positioned to show three views of the female nude, clutch each other in fear. One gesticulates in horror at the sight, her swirling drapery mirroring the movement of her body and adding to the sense of the trio’s agitation. Now darkened, the drapery appears almost black but it was originally a sea-green colour. The nymphs‘ exaggerated poses are mirrored on a smaller scale by the winged figures on the hillock to the right – these are the Heliades, Phaeton’s sisters, who gesture helplessly, unable to save their brother. The ageing figure reclining in the foreground represents the river Eridanus, into which Phaeton fell; Liss has expressed the water’s force as it cascades over boulders from the mountains in the distance.

Liss made this picture while he was in Italy, where he spent time in Venice and Rome. The landscape background seems to be inspired by the countryside around Rome, and his focus on the nymphs’ naked flesh, painted with rich and free strokes of thick paint, reflects both Italian and Flemish Baroque painting. The painter and writer Joachim von Sandrart, who met Liss in Venice in 1628–29, commented: ‘In equally brilliant manner he painted the Fall of Phaeton, and beneath on earth, the water nymphs looking up so terror-stricken, with which beautiful nude nymphs, as well as with the graceful landscape and flaming clouds Liss proved that he was a master of colour and of charming hues.’