The Recognition of Philopoemen

Plutarch tells the story. Philopoemen, the most powerful general in Greece, arrives early at a house where a banquet is being held in his honour, is mistaken for a servant, and is handed an axe and told to chop firewood. His hosts recognise him at exactly that moment. Around 1609 two painters just back in Antwerp from their years in Italy took the subject on together, and this canvas is their first collaboration: Rubens invented the whole composition, as an oil sketch of his now in the Louvre shows, and Frans Snyders painted the food. The story gave him his opening. Piled on the table and the floor for the feast are game birds, artichokes, a melon, a cat going after the meat. The picture is first recorded in 1666, in the royal Alcazar in Madrid.