Amazonenschlacht

Rubens painted this around 1618, back in Antwerp after years of study in Italy, and running the busiest workshop in northern Europe. It takes an old Greek myth, the war between the Athenians of Theseus and the warrior women called the Amazons, and stages it as pure collision. The whole fight is packed onto a bridge and its two ends. Horses rear, bodies twist together, and on the right the defeated Amazons and their mounts are pitching over the parapet into the river below in one long falling spiral. Rubens had studied ancient sculpture and Italian masters closely, and you can feel that here in the way every straining muscle and turning back is worked out. It is a fairly small panel for such a crowded, violent scene, just over a meter wide, which is part of why the eye can barely find a place to rest. It hangs in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.