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Your galleryPolycrates and the Fisherman
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Find the old fisherman holding out the fish to the king in red, then let your eye travel past the leaning tree to the water, the small pyramid and the far mountains.
The ancient historian Herodotus tells of Polycrates, who ruled the Greek island of Samos and feared that his luck was too good to last. To give himself a loss he tossed his valuable signet ring into the waves, but a fisherman caught a fish that had swallowed it and brought the ring back. Rosa sets the moment on a rocky shore under a stormy sky.
Oil on canvas · 73 × 98.6 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Polycrates and the Fisherman
- Artist
- Salvator Rosa (Italian, 1615–1673)
- Date
- 1664
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 73 × 98.6 cm (28 1/2 × 38 13/16 in.); Framed: 87 × 112.4 × 7 cm (34 1/4 × 44 1/4 × 2 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Wentworth Greene Field Memorial Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.