Thétis recevant d'Héphaïstos les armes pour Achille, 1630-1635

This is not really a finished picture. In the early 1630s Rubens took on a commission for a set of woven tapestries telling the life of the Greek hero Achilles, eight scenes in all, and this panel is one of the small oil models he made so weavers could copy the design in thread. The moment shown comes near the end of the story. Achilles has lost his armour, and his mother Thetis, a sea goddess, has gone up to Mount Olympus to collect a new suit from Vulcan, the smith of the gods. A small winged boy passes down the helmet. Rubens keeps the colours strong and the shapes clear, the way a weaver would need them, and you can still make out the border he drew around the scene, the edge where the finished tapestry would stop.