The Death of Hyacinth

The panel is under 15 centimetres across, small enough to hold in one hand. Hyacinth lies in the front of it with blood on his head. Ovid tells the story in the Metamorphoses. The boy and Apollo had oiled themselves for a throwing match, Apollo sent the discus up first, and the hard ground threw it back into Hyacinth's face. In the poem Apollo goes pale and tries to close the wounds with herbs. Here he simply watches, and it is the boy's face, pulled out of shape, that Rubens worked at. Sketches like this were his half of the arrangement with Philip IV. He undertook to invent every scene for the king's hunting lodge in the El Pardo hills and left the full-size canvases to other painters. This one went to Jan Cossiers, and his version hangs in the Royal Palace in Madrid. Nine of the small panels came to the Prado in one gift in 1889 from the dowager Duchess of Pastrana, whose family had inherited them from the Duke of Infantado.