Pastoral Scene (Corydon and Silvia)

Coridon and Silvia were a stock pair of lovers in the shepherd poems and plays of the Low Countries, a literature of country courtship that readers in Rubens's time knew well. The name Corydon goes back further still, to the shepherds of Virgil. Rubens painted the couple late, around 1638, on a big oak panel, and the museum points to the props that identify them. There is a low-cut dress, a garment of fur, a wreath of ivy and a bagpipe, which then counted as a humble instrument belonging to a shepherd's rank. Coridon moves in with urgent desire. Silvia leans away, holding back and flirting at once, and that push and give is the whole picture, courtship in an easy, natural Arcadia. The panel belonged to the gallery of the Palatine electors in Mannheim and came to Munich in 1799.