Landscape with Philemon and Baucis

Landscape with Philemon and Baucis (c. 1620) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum is unusual in Rubens's oeuvre for the centrality of the landscape element: the myth from Ovid — the pious elderly couple whose hospitality to disguised Jupiter and Mercury is rewarded when the gods destroy the impious surrounding village with a flood while transforming the couple's humble cottage into a temple — requires a dramatic landscape of flood and destruction as its primary visual event. Rubens stages the divine punishment as a storm landscape of considerable power, the dark clouds, flooded plains, and tumultuous water dominating the composition while the human figures of the transformed old couple occupy a relatively modest space within the natural drama. This emphasis on landscape rather than figure places the painting in proximity to Rubens's late landscape practice at Het Steen, and may represent an intermediate step in the development of his interest in landscape as an independent subject worthy of the same artistic ambition he brought to his figure compositions.

The painting features a dramatically stormy landscape with the flood waters engulfing the village in the background. Rubens' broad, fluid brushwork captures the violence of the storm with extraordinary atmospheric effects, while the small figures provide narrative focus.

This dramatic landscape with mythological figures has been conserved over the centuries. The canvas has been relined. The landscape elements, particularly the flood waters and storm effects, have been preserved through careful cleaning. Some darkening in the deeper shadow areas has occurred.