Ромул и Рем

Rubens painted Rome's founding legend around 1615, not long after spending eight years in Italy soaking up its ancient sculpture. The twins Romulus and Remus, abandoned as infants, are being suckled by the she-wolf who saved them, while a shepherd arrives to discover the scene. Around them Rubens packs the rest of the story into figures a Roman would recognise, the reclining god of the river Tiber leaning on his urn, and the woodpecker that myth said also brought the babies food. The brushwork is quick and the flesh warm, the wolf's muscles and the soft infants lit against a dark landscape. The painting now hangs in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, a few steps from the ancient bronze wolf that fixed this image in the city's imagination.