Europa and the Bull

Europa and the Bull by Paolo Veronese, painted around 1580 and now in the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, depicts the mythological abduction in which Zeus transforms himself into a beautiful white bull to approach the Phoenician princess Europa, who is then carried across the sea to Crete where she becomes the mother of King Minos. The myth was one of the most popular Ovidian subjects in Venetian painting — Titian's Europa for Philip II was one of the most celebrated paintings in sixteenth-century Europe — and Veronese's late treatment characteristically emphasizes the pastoral beauty of the scene over its erotic violence. Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, housed in a Victorian building adjoining the Royal Pavilion, holds this late Veronese as part of a diverse art collection that reflects the cultural aspirations of a major south-coast resort city. The painting's passage from an Italian to an English provincial collection illustrates the wide dispersal of Italian paintings through the British art market over three centuries of collecting.

Veronese renders the mythological scene with his late palette of warm, saturated tones, with the white bull creating a powerful chromatic focal point. The landscape and seascape elements are handled with atmospheric breadth, while the figure of Europa demonstrates Veronese's graceful approach to the female nude, emphasizing elegance over the raw sensuality of Titian's treatment.