Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun  1658

For his depiction of the gigantic hunter, painted for Michel Passart, Poussin drew on the Greek writer Lucian: "Orion who is blind, is carrying Cedalion, and the latter, riding on his back, is showing him the way to the sunlight. The rising sun is healing [his] blindness." Poussin also studied the sixteenth-century commentary on the tale by Natalis Comes that affords a met...