The subject was taken from Ovid's Metamorphosis. Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops, fell in love with the nymph Galatea. Seated on a rock, Polyphemus looks out to the sea into which Galatea disappeared with her lover Alkid – who was killed by Polyphemus and whose blood turned into a river. Strong love transforms the ferocious Cyclops, and he expresses his love by playing a reed pipe, the sounds of which charm the people and the gods of both river and woodland. To represent the idealized image of Nature as the manifestation of the Absolute, the artist created a so-called ‘heroic landscape'. The lucidity and harmony of the painter's manner and the regular composition are typical of 17th-century French Classicism.