Orpheus and the animals

Orpheus charming animals with his music was a subject that allowed painters to combine landscape, animal painting, and figure work within a single mythologically sanctioned composition. The myth — the son of Apollo whose singing pacified all living creatures — carried humanist resonances about the civilising power of music and poetry, making it perennially appealing to learned collectors. Van Thulden painted this canvas in 1636 for the Museo del Prado's collection, likely as part of the batch of Flemish mythological paintings acquired by or produced for Spanish royal and aristocratic taste. The subject had been memorably treated by Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder in a famous collaboration, and Van Thulden's version necessarily engaged with that celebrated precedent. Animal painters — specialists who could depict lions, horses, or exotic birds with zoological accuracy — were sometimes called in as collaborators for such compositions.

The composition requires balancing the central human figure of Orpheus playing his lyre against a varied array of animals gathered around him, with landscape providing spatial depth. Van Thulden draws on the Rubens-Brueghel formula for the arrangement: a central clearing in a forest glade, Orpheus elevated on a natural platform, animals arranged in concentric rings of attentiveness. The warm natural light of the landscape setting unifies the diverse cast.