Feast of the Gods, possibly the Feast at the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis

In the 1590s the fashionable picture in the northern Netherlands was a crowded mythology full of twisting nudes, and the wedding of Peleus and Thetis was a favourite subject. Cornelis van Haarlem had painted a huge version for the city of Haarlem only a few years earlier. Bloemaert, newly settled back in Utrecht, brought the subject down to a canvas about 40 centimetres wide and painted it almost entirely in shades of red. A picture in one colour like this is called a rosaille, and it was usually a study for something else. Bloemaert treated this one as finished and signed and dated it, A. Blomaert, 1598. The gods can be picked out by what they carry, Poseidon by his trident, Artemis by the crescent moon in her hair, and in the centre Aphrodite lies stretched out in a pose that shows off her figure. The title hedges, because the museum is not sure this is the wedding feast. At that feast, in the myth, the uninvited goddess of discord threw down a golden apple, and the quarrel over it led in the end to the Trojan War.