The Wedding of Thetis and Peleus

Hendrick van Balen painted the wedding feast of Thetis and Peleus again and again. One specialist has counted at least ten versions, three of them in Dresden alone, which is why this copper is so hard to date. Most scholars place it around 1617 or 1618, while another study ties it closely to a Dresden version dated 1608. Van Balen painted the figures, and the woodland is by his Antwerp colleague Jan Brueghel the Elder. The gods sit at a long white table under the trees, the Muses make music off to one side, and Bacchus, the sea goddess Amphitrite and Ceres appear in the foreground. The collectors who gave it away, Léon and Jeanne Salavin, believed it was by the German painter Hans Rottenhammer. In 1973 they donated it to the Fondation de France, which placed it on permanent deposit at the Louvre.