Wolfs- und Fuchsjagd

Around 1616 Rubens worked out a new kind of product. Wealthy patrons wanted big, action-filled scenes for their walls, and normally that meant tapestry, which was slow and hugely expensive. Rubens offered them the same scale in paint instead. This wolf and fox hunt, well over three metres wide, was the first of the great hunting pictures he turned out in these years, with assistants blocking in much of the work under his direction. He was careful to insist that the wolves themselves were his own hand. The canvas was later cut down to fit a collector's room, so the sweep of horses, hounds and spearmen you see now is already tighter than the scene that first left his studio.