Undine Giving the Ring to Massaniello, Fisherman of Naples

It was from a German story, by Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Baron de la Motte Fouque, that he took the story of Undine, the sea sprite who, created without a soul, must gain one by marrying a human and bearing his child, but pay the price of assuming all the burdens of humanity. Turner probably knew the story from Hoffmann’s opera (1816) or from a ballet recently seen on the London stage. In this picture of 1846, he marries his sprite to Massaniello, who had led a fishermen’s revolt in seventeenth-century Naples. As a keen fisherman himself, and angry about recent criticism of his work, he doubtless identified with the rebellious Italian. In this union of fact and fantasy, history and myth, body and soul, and its contrasted protagonists, realized in shimmering colours, he seems to comment on his own union with elemental forces of sea, sky and wave.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Albert Lortzing: Undine, duet