Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus

The work titled Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus was painted by Nicolas Poussin in 1627 as an oil on canvas measuring 97.5 × 72.5 cm. It depicts the mythological scene of King Midas and the river god Pactolus and is classified as a mythological painting. According to the catalog entry, the composition was originally conceived as a pendant to Poussin's first version of Et in Arcadia ego, a relationship noted by Anthony Blunt. The painting entered the collection of William T. Blodgett before being acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains.

Earlier treatments of the same subject were executed circa 1617 by Bartolomeo Manfredi. While the specific accession number is not detailed in the provided sources, the work is documented as part of the museum's holdings, and the sources cite no specific exhibition or loan records for the painting.

Poussin's 1627 Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus has been read as part of a broader Arcadian meditation on desire's vanity. Anthony Blunt's 1966 catalogue situates the work as the pendant to Poussin's first Et in Arcadia ego, emphasizing parallel compositions and shared allegorical intent. Earlier, Bartolomeo Manfredi had treated the same subject around 1617, yet Poussin's rendering transposes Ovid's Phrygian tale into a classical landscape that also evokes the Arcadian Alpheus, merging regional myth with broader meditations on wealth and transience.

Subsequent scholarship, such as Oskar Bätschmann's dialectical reading of Poussin's practice, frames the painting within a seventeenth-century reconsideration of classical exempla, while William Marx interprets both works as twin allegories of absolute wealth and abject poverty.

This oil painting, titled "Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus," presents a scene from classical mythology. It depicts a man, identified as Midas, seated on a rock and cradling a sleeping child wrapped in cloth. Another child observes from behind, leaning against a tree.

The composition employs strong contrasts of light and shadow, which give the figures a tangible presence against a dark, natural setting, accented by a red drapery on the left.