The Triumph of Galatea is a fresco by renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, also known as Raphael. It depicts the character of Galatea, who appears in Greek mythology as a sea-nymph in love with a mortal. Raphael has immortalized the moment of Galatea’s apotheosis, when she becomes a being of the most divine level. The fresco is a testament to the humanization Raphael was able to bring to his work, and is the only work of Raphael’s based on a Greek myth. Singulart explains the myth behind the artwork and explores the composition of the fresco.

In Greek mythology, Galatea (meaning “she who is milk-white”) is a sea-nymph known as a Nereid. Although she had appeared in other classical Greek tales, the story of Galatea and Acis first appeared in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She falls in love with Acis, a beautiful, mortal shephard who is the son of Faunus, god of the forest, and the river-nymph Symaethis. Although her heart belongs to Acis, Galatea is also pursued by the Sicilian cyclops Polyphemus. Polyphemus becomes enraged by Galatea and Acis’s affair, and strikes Acis with a boulder, killing him instantly. Blood then bursts from the stone, and a grieving Galatea turns Acis’s blood into the Sicilian river Acis, where he is immortalized as a spirit. 

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