Apollo killing the Cyclops

Apollo in a red cloak shoots his arrows at two one-eyed men, one of whom lies prostrate on the ground as the other flees. These are the Cyclops, a mythical race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead. This is one of ten frescoes by Domenichino and assistants which originally adorned the walls of a room known as the Stanza di Apollo in a garden pavilion in the grounds of the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, near Rome. All show stories of Apollo, and eight of them were transferred to canvas and are now in our collection.Unlike the other stories in this cycle, this tale is not found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. According to Euripides‘ play Alcestis, Apollo killed the Cyclops in retaliation for the murder of his son, Asclepius, by Zeus: the Cyclops had made the thunderbolt which Zeus used to slay Asclepius.The iconographical scheme of the frescoes was conceived by Domenichino’s friend Giovanni Battista Agucchi, both to glorify the Aldobrandini family and to express their philosophical and religious ideas. For them, Apollo was not just the god of the sun and the arts, but by extension the light of reason. Like Marsyas in another fresco in the cycle, The Flaying of Marsyas, the one-eyed Cyclops may represent the sensual and brutish aspects of human nature.The picture is painted as a trompe l’oeil tapestry with an embroidered border. This is drawn up in the lower right corner to reveal a dwarf chained to a barred window, fruit and a plate with leftovers, some of which have been stolen by a cat. The dwarf was a real individual and a study for the figure, done from life, is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. He was a retainer of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini and his inclusion in the painting is a kind of practical joke. The biographer Giovanni Battista Passeri recounted that Aldobrandini ordered the artist to paint the dwarf in this way as a punishment for impertinence.This picture was originally on the left-hand wall of the Stanza di Apollo, next to Apollo slaying Python, which still remains in situ. The barred window mimicked a real window with bars on the opposite wall.