Democritus

Between 1636 and 1638 a hunting lodge outside Madrid was given a small gathering of ancient thinkers. Democritus, the philosopher who laughed at what people do, hung there with Heraclitus, the one who wept over it, and near them Aesop and Menippus, painted for the same rooms by Velázquez. The two philosophers came from Antwerp with the huge consignment Rubens supplied for the lodge. The Prado gives this canvas to his workshop rather than to him: an assistant carried out the figure, and Rubens went back over it, most visibly in the red of the tunic, where the touches are brighter and the folds have been shifted. Democritus laughs while he studies a globe of the earth. The canvas is tall and narrow, a little over 180 centimetres high and 66 wide.