Cupid on a dolphin

In 1636 Philip IV of Spain wanted more than sixty mythological pictures for the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge in the hills near Madrid, and he wanted them fast. He turned to Rubens in Antwerp, by then in his late fifties, wealthy and slowed by gout, who took on the whole cycle drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Rubens designed it in small oil sketches like this one, barely the size of a hand, and left most of the large canvases to his workshop. Here Cupid rides a dolphin, bow ready, the creature that carried lovers across the sea in the old stories. You can see the sketch was made at speed, the dolphin's back and the boy's shoulders laid down wet and loose, a set of instructions painted rather than written.