The Giant Polyphemus

In 1636 Philip IV ordered about 60 mythological pictures from Rubens for the Torre de la Parada, his hunting lodge in the woods outside Madrid. Rubens painted the small oil sketches himself and handed most of the enlargements to other Antwerp painters, and the whole consignment reached Spain in 1638. One of those large canvases, a Polyphemus by Jan Cossiers, is lost. What survives of the design is this panel, about 27 centimetres tall, a copy of Rubens's sketch for it. The blinded giant strides into the water with a rock raised in both hands, and at the left a few small figures pull at the oars of a boat that has got clear of him. The Prado kept the panel under Rubens's own name until 1972, when it was reclassified as a copy. It came into the museum in 1889, given by the duchess of Pastrana.