Jupiter as Satyr by Antiope

In 1938 the Berlin dealer Karl Haberstock bought this canvas for the art collection Adolf Hitler was assembling for a museum in Linz, a museum that was never built. In 1945 it came to the Allied collecting point in Munich, where recovered works were sorted, and from there it passed to the Federal Republic of Germany. The state has lent it to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum since 1966, and it carries a deposit number rather than a Cologne inventory number.

The subject is from the Roman poet Ovid. Jupiter wanted Antiope, a Theban king's daughter, so he took the form of a satyr and came to her while she slept. Ovid counts the episode among the disguises the gods used to get at women, and Antiope later bore twin sons by him. Van Dyck painted the moment the shaggy figure lifts the cloth away from her. The eagle half hidden in the dark on the right is Jupiter's own bird, and it tells you who the satyr is.

He was about 20 and working in Antwerp when he made it, somewhere between 1617 and 1620. A larger version of the same composition is in Ghent, and several old repetitions and copies of it are recorded.