Diana and Callisto

In the late 1620s Rubens spent months at the Spanish court copying the Titians in the royal collection, and he never quite got over them. The loose, broken brushwork of the old Venetian stayed with him for the rest of his life, and you can see the debt here. This was one of dozens of mythological scenes he supplied for Philip IV's hunting lodge outside Madrid in the 1630s, and it reworks a composition by Titian that Rubens had copied on that very visit. The subject is the moment the goddess Diana discovers that Callisto, one of her sworn-virgin companions, is pregnant by Jupiter. The other women pull her clothing back to reveal it, while Diana raises her hand and points.