The Rape of Hippodamia

In Ovid, the centaurs were guests at the wedding of Pirithous, king of the Lapiths, and they drank too much. One of them, Eurytion, seized the bride Hippodamia, and the feast turned into a battle. Rubens catches it as the furniture goes over. A bench lies tipped at the bottom, and a cloth, fruit and a jug spill across the floor. On the left a guest comes in with a knife, and above him someone swings a long pole. The bride is stretched almost flat between the Lapith men grabbing at her and the centaur hauling her off to the right. This small panel is Rubens's own design for one of the Ovid scenes he designed in 1636 and 1637 for Philip IV's hunting lodge near Madrid. The full-size canvas painted from it is in the Prado. The Brussels museum bought it in 1883 from Léon Gauchez, a Paris dealer.