The Lion Hunt

Around 1621 Rubens finished a run of huge hunting pictures he had been making for princely patrons across Europe, and this Munich canvas closes that phase. It is nearly four metres wide. At its centre a tawny lion rears in mid-roar, one fallen hunter already in its jaws, while horsemen drive in from every side with spears and curved swords. Rubens knotted the whole thing into a single diagonal, so that limbs, manes and weapons lock together and the eye can never quite rest. He had studied Leonardo's lost battle mural, the Battle of Anghiari, and borrowed its tangle of straining horses and men. A rider charges in from the back on a pale horse, holding the depth of the scene open.