TO LOOK AT A PICTURE
DIANA AND CALISTO
Pedro Pablo Rubens (1.577-1640)
Flemish painting S.XVII.
Prado Museum. Madrid. (Spain)
 or his content and for his measurements, one believes that this linen should be part of one set of paintings of mythological topic that was entrusted him to Rubens by king Felipe IV in the direction of the "Tower of the Stop", a small palace placed in the mounts of The Brown one, in outskirts of Madrid.
The small palace (a building of two apartments of rectangular plant, finished off by towers of dry sherries capitals in his ends, much of the taste of the Austrias), was the result of the enlargement, carried out in 1636 and on initiative of proper Felipe IV, of a small fortitude with four towers of corner built in times of the emperor Carlos V. His last purpose was that of serving as rest to the monarch during many hunts of which he was so keen.
Rubens painted personally some of the pictures that integrated this wide series. The remaining ones were realized by his disciples and his nearest collaborators, taking a sketch as a model before to color of small format of hand of his teacher.
THE PICTURE
TITLE ROLE:
 Prado Museum
Catalog Nº: 1671
Dimensions: 2,02 X 2,32 m.
Type of picture: oil on linen
Pedro Pablo Rubens (1577-1640)
Flemish painting (XVIIth Century)
The painter, taking as a principal inspiration source the book of "The Metamorphoses" of the Latin poet Ovidio, represents in this linen one of the key scenes of history of the nymph Calisto, habitual accompanist of the goddess Diana in his hunts for the forest, which was seduced, like so many people others, by the tireless Jupiter. We see the moment in which Diana led to the bath for a black servant, has just discovered Calisto's pregnancy, although this one tries to conceal it in vain refusing to undress for the bath or to be deprived of his dressed by his partners.
His golden lights, his expressive freedom and the ease of his skill allow to assign this work to the stage of ripeness of Rubens. Nevertheless, in the opinion of some specialists, the scenery could have been realized by Lucas van Udem, one of his collaborators, and some accessories for a disciple.
Quoted in diverse inventories of the Citadel of Madrid and of the New Palace, the painting happened later with other pictures of nude of the Real Collection to the Academy of Fine Arts from San Fernando, and did not enter the Prado Museum (founded in 1819) until 1827. |
History
Small Art
Actuality 
Confidential