Der Raub der Proserpina

This is early Rembrandt, painted around 1631 when he was in his mid-twenties and still building a name in Leiden. He took the subject straight from the star of the age, a composition by Rubens, then the most famous painter in Europe, and tried to out-do him on a panel barely bigger than a sheet of paper. The story is from Ovid. Pluto, lord of the underworld, seizes Proserpina while she gathers flowers and hauls her onto his chariot toward the dark. Rembrandt catches the exact instant of resistance. Proserpina twists back and rakes her nails down Pluto's face, while two of her companions have grabbed fistfuls of her golden robe and are being dragged off their feet rather than let go. Around this time the young painter was beginning to draw the notice of the stadtholder's secretary in The Hague, and small, violent, brilliantly lit pictures like this were how he announced himself.