Ganymede receives the bowl from Hebe

Rubens had not long been back in Antwerp after eight years in Italy, and around 1611 he was the most sought-after painter in the city, running a busy workshop and turning out gods and saints at scale. This canvas is nearly a perfect square, a little over two metres on each side. The story it tells is a promotion on Olympus. Ganymede, a Trojan prince the god Jupiter had carried off by eagle, is being handed the cup of the gods by Hebe, the goddess of youth whose job he is taking over. The eagle is still there beside him. Rubens gives the boy the heavy, sunlit body he had learned to paint from Titian in Venice.