El rapto de Europa

In the late summer of 1628 Rubens arrived in Madrid, sent not as a painter but as a diplomat, carrying messages between Spain and England. The nine-month stay left him time on his hands, and he spent much of it in the royal palace copying Titian, whom he revered. This is his version of Titian's Europa, which then hung in the king's private summer apartments. Rubens follows the older composition closely, with Europa sprawled across the swimming bull and cupids tumbling overhead, but the flesh is unmistakably his own, warmer and looser, built from unblended strokes of grey and pink. He rolled the canvas up and carried it back to Antwerp in 1629. It stayed among the pictures he kept for himself until, after his death, it entered the Spanish royal collection.