The Fall of Phaethon (sketch for the Torre de la Parada)

Rubens first painted Phaethon as a young man in Italy, on a crowded canvas that is now in Washington. More than 30 years later the story came back to him as a royal order. Philip IV of Spain wanted scenes from Ovid for his hunting lodge near Madrid, the Torre de la Parada, and this panel, about 28 centimetres square, is Rubens's design for one of them. Phaethon, son of the Sun, has talked his father into letting him drive the sun's chariot, lost control, and been struck down by Jupiter's thunderbolt. Rubens keeps only the rearing white horses, one great chariot wheel and the boy falling beneath them. The full-size canvas, nearly two metres tall, was painted from this sketch by the Antwerp artist Jan Carel van Eyck and belongs to the Prado. The sketch itself reached Brussels in 1919, left to the museum by Adela Crooke, Countess of Valencia de Don Juan, a Spanish collector who with her husband had founded an institute and museum in Madrid three years before.