Deucalion and Pyrrha

Deucalion and Pyrrha (c. 1636) at the Museo del Prado is a small, freely executed late work depicting the Greek equivalents of Noah and his wife — the only human survivors of the great flood Zeus sent to destroy a wicked humanity, who repopulate the earth by throwing stones over their shoulders that transform into men and women. The subject from Ovid's Metamorphoses combines themes of catastrophe and renewal that were natural to Rubens in his final decade, when the Thirty Years' War was devastating the European civilization he had spent his career both serving and celebrating. The flood and the new beginning may have carried personal resonances for a painter in his final years who was watching the world he had known being transformed by conflict he had tried to prevent. The Prado's possession of this small late panel alongside the great monumental Rubens works in the same collection allows the intimate scale and subject to be read against the full arc of a career that had addressed both the largest human ambitions and the most private domestic concerns.

The painting shows the couple in a devastated landscape casting stones that transform into human figures. Rubens' warm palette and atmospheric handling create a scene that bridges the mythological and the naturalistic.

This mythological scene from 1636 was part of the Torre de la Parada decorative cycle. The canvas has been conserved with attention to the transformation effects that are the narrative's visual center. The painting has been relined. Some areas of the devastated landscape have darkened.