Galatea

Italian (Urbino), Charger with the Triumph of Galatea, c. 1550, majolica (tin-glazed earthenware), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles

Galatea (both Greek and Roman) is a nymph and a sea divinity, who appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses.  She fell in love with the shepherd Acis, but he was killed by the jealous Polyphemus, a cyclops.  After he died, she turned him into a river.

Her image became very popular during the seventeenth century.