The Triumph of Bacchus

In the late 1630s, King Philip IV was fitting out a modest hunting lodge in the woods outside Madrid, the Torre de la Parada, and he wanted its walls covered in mythology. The commission went to Rubens, by then old and busy in his Antwerp workshop, who did what a workshop master does: he painted small oil sketches, dozens of them, and handed the full-size canvases to other Flemish hands. This Bacchus, the god of wine carried along in tipsy triumph, was worked up by Cornelis de Vos from one of those Rubens designs. It was never meant for a hall of state. It decorated a room where the king came to hunt and escape the court, one mythological scene among some 60 that turned a lodge in the trees into a private gallery of the ancient gods.