The Rape of Europa

This is early Goya, painted in 1772 when he was about 26 and still years away from the Spanish court that would make him famous. The subject is an old one. Zeus, disguised as a white bull, has coaxed the princess Europa onto his back and is carrying her off across the sea. Goya strips the scene down. The bull is dark and already pushing out of the frame, one maid cries for help, and the others reach uselessly after the vanishing princess. It is a young painter working through the great mythological set pieces of the past, a subject Titian and Rubens had each taken on before him. The picture remains in private hands and is rarely seen in public.