Il ratto di Europa

The myth is in the title. Jupiter has taken the form of a white bull, and the Phoenician princess Europa, garlanded by her companions, is being coaxed onto his back before he carries her off across the sea. But Claude Lorrain, working in Rome in 1655, treats the abduction almost as an afterthought, tucked into a lower corner of a wide, calm shore. What he really painted is the light, a harbour at a gentle hour, the water silvered, ships riding at anchor, the far coast dissolving into haze. Claude came back to this Europa story more than once over his career, each time as a reason to build one of these luminous bays. The bull steps toward the water at the very spot where the eye is already travelling out to sea.