Saturne

Rubens painted this around 1636 for a hunting lodge, the Torre de la Parada, that Philip the Fourth of Spain kept in the woods outside Madrid. The whole building was to be hung with scenes from the old myths, and Rubens delivered dozens of designs from his workshop in the last years of his life. Here the god Saturn tears into his own child, following the ancient story that he ate his sons rather than let one overthrow him. In older tellings he swallowed them whole. Rubens shows the bite. Up in the dark sky are three small points of light, and they are not random. They stand for the planet Saturn as Galileo had recently reported seeing it through his telescope, with what he took to be two companions flanking it.