Apollo and Daphne

For generations this canvas was catalogued under another painter's name. It came from the Torre de la Parada, the hunting lodge Philip IV kept in the oak woods north of Madrid, which Rubens filled between 1636 and 1638 with scenes from Ovid. He designed the whole cycle as small oil sketches on panel and handed them to painters in Antwerp to enlarge. This one was recorded as the work of Cornelis de Vos until 2017, when conservation work brought up the signature of Theodoor van Thulden and the museum changed the name on the label. The subject is the chase from the first book of the Metamorphoses: Daphne is turning into a laurel while Apollo is still reaching for her. An old handwritten label on the back of the frame gets the story wrong as well, calling her the nymph Syrinx and saying she becomes a vine.