Pan and Syrinx

The story of Pan and Syrinx derives from Ovid's Metamorphoses, I:689-713. Syrinx, one of the most beautiful and chaste of the nymphs of Arcadia, was spotted by Pan, who immediately fell in love with her. Syrinx 'scorning all his pleas, fled through the barren waste until she reached the placid, sandy stream of Ladon: here the river blocked her flight, and so she begged her sister water nymphs to change her shape. And Pan, who thought that he had caught the nymph, did not clutch her fair body but marsh reeds; and began to sigh; and then the air, vibrating in the reeds, produced a sound most delicate, like a lament. And Pan enchanted by the sweetness of a sound that none had ever heard before, cried out: "And this is how I shall converse with you!" He took unequal lengths of reeds, and these Pan joined with wax: this instrument still keeps the name Pan gave it then, the nymph's name - Syrinx.' The subject was a favourite of Carpioni; Pilo records several works depicting Pan and Syrinx, including the pictures in private collections in Padua and Milan (see G.M. Pilo, Carpioni, Venice, 1961, p. 105, fig. 157; and p. 102, fig. 181 respectively), both of which he dates to the last decade of the artist's life.