I quattro continenti

Rubens painted this around 1615, during a rare stretch of peace: the Twelve Years' Truce that briefly halted the long war between the Netherlands and Spain and let Antwerp breathe again. He gathered the whole known world into one warm, crowded group. Four great rivers become heavy, reclining men, each entwined with a woman who stands for the continent it waters, the Nile for Africa, the Ganges for Asia, the Danube for Europe, and the Rio de la Plata for America, still a fairly new name on European maps. To tell them apart Rubens tucks an animal beside each, a crocodile down among the reeds for Africa, a tiger reaching toward the Ganges god for Asia.