Cephalus and Procris

In 1636 Philip IV had the Torre de la Parada refitted, a hunting lodge in the oak woods of El Pardo outside Madrid, and ordered more than 60 mythological pictures for it from Rubens in Antwerp. Rubens designed each subject as a small oil sketch and handed the full-size canvases to other Antwerp painters. This one was carried out by Peeter Symons, and what it shows, in a house built for shooting game, is a hunting accident. Procris suspected her husband of another woman and followed him into the wood. Cephalus heard something move in the bushes and threw at what he took for an animal. Ovid tells the story in the seventh book of the Metamorphoses, where the weapon is a spear, and a spear is what Rubens gave him in the sketch the Prado also holds. On the large canvas it has turned into an arrow. Royal inventories taken between 1703 and 1711 still list the picture in the lodge, in the third room of the lower floor.