Vulcan forging the Thunderbolts of Jupiter

In the mid-1630s Philip IV of Spain ordered dozens of mythological scenes to hang in the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge in the hills outside Madrid, and he turned to the most sought-after painter in Europe to design them. Rubens was near 60 and slowed by gout, so he worked the compositions out in small oil sketches and left most of the enlarging to other painters in Antwerp; this canvas the museum gives to his own hand. Most of the series retells Ovid, but this scene comes from Virgil: in the eighth book of the Aeneid the smith of the gods and his Cyclopes are beating out a thunderbolt for Jupiter. Vulcan is all muscle and effort, lit by the forge and the half-made bolt in front of him. The armour behind him points somewhere else, to the arms Thetis asked him to make for Achilles. Velazquez, the king's own painter, worked on the same commission.