Philopoemen Recognised by an Old Woman

Philopoemen was a general of the Achaean League in ancient Greece, and the biographer Plutarch tells a story about him. Invited to a house in Megara, he arrived ahead of his host, and the hostess, seeing a plain, shabby man, took him for a servant and set him to split firewood. When the host came in and asked what he was doing, Philopoemen said he was paying for his looks. Here he is still at the axe while an old woman and a bearded man peer at him. Most of the panel is kitchen, heaped with a swan, a peacock, a hare and cuts of meat. A large version in the Prado was long listed as a joint work with the still-life painter Frans Snyders, and the Louvre argues that this careful sketch, of around 1609 to 1610, shows the still life was Rubens's own idea.