Prometheus Carrying Fire

In the 1630s King Philip IV of Spain was filling a hunting lodge outside Madrid, the Torre de la Parada, with dozens of mythological pictures. Rubens, up in Antwerp, could not paint them all himself, so he made small colour sketches and handed them to other Flemish painters to work up at full size. This Prometheus, fleeing Olympus with the stolen fire and glancing back at the anger he has provoked, was carried out by Jan Cossiers from Rubens's design in 1637. For a long time no one was quite sure who had painted it. Then a conservator found Cossiers's own signature, hidden in the flames of the torch Prometheus carries, and the question was settled.