The Abduction of Europa
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 to 1669) · 1632
A young woman in a bright red dress clings to the back of a white bull as it wades into the sea, looking back in terror at the friends she is leaving on the shore. One of them throws up her hands, another kneels frozen, and a coachman with a horse and carriage watches helplessly from the bank. The bull is Jupiter in disguise, carrying off the Phoenician princess Europa to Crete, a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses that Rembrandt turns into a moment of real fright rather than mythological pageantry.
Rembrandt was twenty six and had just moved to Amsterdam, and he rarely painted landscapes or myths, which makes this small panel a rarity. Look at the light: a golden sky breaks through the trees on the right while the left side sinks into shadow, and the water catches the glow in quick, broken strokes. The costume is not ancient Greek but the rich fashion of Rembrandt's own day, and the harbour behind, with its crane and ships, looks like Amsterdam. The tiny jewel like details of the dress and the bull's garland reward a close look, and the sheer skill of the sea foam around the animal's legs shows why the young painter was already a sensation.
The panel may have been commissioned by an Amsterdam merchant who saw in Europa's voyage a flattering image of trade across the seas, and it is signed and dated sixteen thirty two, the same year as The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Tulp. It passed through French and English collections before the Getty bought it in nineteen ninety five, and it is now the museum's only painting by Rembrandt on a mythological subject.
Did You Know? The abduction of Europa was a favourite subject of Dutch traders because Europa gave her name to the continent and her journey crossed the sea.
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