The Andrians

Titian painted the original in the 1520s for Alfonso d'Este, duke of Ferrara, one of a set of bacchanals for a small room in his castle. It shows a drinking party on the Greek island of Andros, where a stream ran with wine. In 1598 the Papal State took over Ferrara, and the papal legate, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, removed a number of the Este pictures to Rome and kept them largely out of view. Painters found their way to them anyway. Rubens made this free version after Titian at some point, and nobody has established when or where. It was still in his studio when he died in 1640, a year after Titian's canvas had been given to Philip IV of Spain, so the copy and the original ended up in the same royal collection. This one left Madrid during the Napoleonic wars and reached Sweden with the Bernadotte family after 1814. Karl XV handed it to the Nationalmuseum in 1865, and Titian's canvas is still in Madrid, in the Prado.