The Persecution of the Harpies

When the dowager Duchess of Pastrana gave nine small Rubens panels to the Prado in 1889, this one was listed in the paperwork as a copy after Rubens, under the title Two angels driving off evil spirits. The winged youths had been read as angels and the creatures they chase as demons. They are Zetes and Calais, the winged sons of the north wind, and the creatures are harpies, half woman and half bird. Ovid disposes of the episode in two lines; the fuller account is in the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, where the harpies swoop down on a blind old man's food and the brothers give chase with drawn swords. Rubens worked the two youths up carefully and left the harpies sketchier, one of them cut in half by the edge of the panel, which is 14 centimetres across.