Tereus' Banquet

Rubens chose the second when the horror lands. Tereus, the king of Thrace, has finished the meal put in front of him and asks for his son to be brought in. His wife Procne and her sister Philomela lift the boy's head above the table, as if it were another dish. The story comes from the sixth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Tereus had raped Philomela and cut out her tongue so she could not speak of it. She wove the story into a cloth instead, and Procne, reading it, killed her own child to punish him. The Prado, which catalogues the canvas as Rubens and his workshop, calls it very likely the cruellest of the mythological scenes he supplied for Philip IV's hunting lodge outside Madrid between 1636 and 1638. A palace front stands behind the table, and every figure moves sideways, which is what carries the violence across a canvas nearly three metres wide. Ovid ends the episode a few lines later, with Tereus coming after the sisters with his sword and all three of them turning into birds.