The hunt of Meleagros and Atalante

Around 1618 Rubens was the busiest painter in Europe, running a large Antwerp studio that turned out hunting scenes and mythologies by the wall-full for princes and courts. This is one of them, close to four metres across, taken from Ovid: the boar that the goddess Diana sent to ravage the land of Calydon, and the hero Meleager gathering the bravest hunters to kill it. The figure to notice is Atalanta, the one woman in the chase. She draws first blood, and Meleager, who loves her, hands her the prize hide. That gift is the trap. His uncles object to a woman being honoured, he kills them in his anger, and his own mother then takes her revenge, so the triumph you are watching is really the start of his death. Rubens gives none of that away, freezing the hunt at its loudest moment, all straining dogs and levelled spears.