Dogs attacking a wild boar

The Prado dates this canvas between 1636 and 1639, the years when Philip IV was fitting out the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge in the oak woods of El Pardo, north of Madrid. Rubens was supplying that building with mythological scenes from Antwerp. The hunting and animal pieces came from painters who specialised in them, and this boar and its dogs hung in the lodge. The picture also kept its companion for a long time. When the royal collection was listed in the new palace in Madrid in 1772, the clerk still entered the two side by side, a boar hunt with dogs and a concert of birds, each two varas long and one high. The name F. Snyders is written in brown at the lower right of the canvas.