Jupiter and Antiope

The subject is a rape out of Ovid. Jupiter wants Antiope, takes the shape of a shaggy satyr so that his wife Hera will not know him, and comes to her while she sleeps. Van Dyck paints her asleep and unaware with the satyr leaning over her, and the eagle at the right is the only thing in the picture that gives away who he really is.

Ghent's museum took the painting in 1900, a gift from the Friends of the Museum, and some of its board thought it too risque to put in front of women visitors. The museum's own catalogue entry is blunter now, saying outright that viewers were expected to enjoy her nakedness and not dwell on what was happening to her. Van Dyck made the composition twice. The other canvas, 150 by 206 centimetres like this one, is in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne.