THE ABDUCTION OF EUROPA. OIL ON CANVAS. Probably 18TH CENTURY, AFTER VERONESE.

Rapture of Europe. Oil on canvas. Probably 18th century following the model of VERONESE, Paolo Caliari (Verona, 1528-Venice, 1588). Oil on canvas that shows a scene from classical mythology located in a natural landscape with leafy trees and a fragment of pyramid-shaped ruins towards the background. Note (because of the clothing) that the female character situated on a white bull in the group on the left is the same one that appears moving away on the animal on the right and, again, in the water, in the background of the composition. Europa was a Phoenician princess who was kidnapped by Zeus: the god transformed into a white bull and mixed with the cattle that the girl's father had. She saw him while he was picking flowers with his entourage of ladies and when she saw the bull, she approached the animal. After verifying that it was tame, she ended up on its back, at which point Zeus took the opportunity to take her on his back to Crete, entering the sea. Paolo Caliari or Cagliari, better known as Paolo Veronese or Veronese, was a very important painter of Venetian Mannerism. He treated the same theme with a very similar composition on a canvas painted in 1573 and kept in the Antecollegiate of the Doge's Palace in Venice, and on another canvas dated between 1580 and 1585 that is in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. The present work, clearly, is based on the second painting mentioned, since it was a frequent source of inspiration for numerous painters and, particularly, for the Spanish scholarship holders in Rome (the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid preserves another Rapture of Europe inspired by the same work of Veronese, but this one carried out by Alejandro de la Cruz, a student of Mengs who was pensioned in 1765 by the Academy in Rome).

· Size: 191x7x158 cms. 167x134 cms.