Orpheus and the animals

For a long time nobody was sure whose picture this is. The 1700 inventory of the Torre de la Parada, the king's hunting lodge outside Madrid, entered it as a Rubens. Svetlana Alpers, who wrote the one full study of that commission, gave it to Paul de Vos, another Antwerp animal painter. Then a restoration turned up two signatures on the canvas itself, Frans Snyders on the hind leg of the stag and Theodoor van Thulden on the lyre, and the Prado now lists both men as its authors. The story comes from book 10 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Orpheus, having lost Eurydice a second time, withdraws from people and sings to the animals, and they gather around him. More than four metres of canvas are given over to that audience. The lodge decoration was the largest commission Philip IV ever placed with Rubens, painted in Antwerp around 1636 to 1638 and shipped to Madrid.