Prometheus Bound

Prometheus Bound (c. 1611-12) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art was painted in collaboration with Frans Snyders, who contributed the eagle that perpetually devours the Titan's liver — a division of labour that combined Rubens's mastery of the heroic male nude with Snyders's unrivaled skill in depicting birds and animals. The subject from Hesiod and Aeschylus — Prometheus chained to a rock, punished by Zeus for stealing fire from the gods to give to humanity, condemned to eternal suffering as an eagle tears at his regenerating liver — was the supreme classical image of human ambition punished by divine jealousy. Rubens's Prometheus is physically monumental: his body, twisted in pain and resistance, demonstrates the mastery of extreme anatomy in movement that his Italian studies had given him. The Philadelphia Museum's holding of this collaborative masterpiece in the American Mid-Atlantic places a work of the highest ambition within one of the country's great encyclopaedic museum collections. The painting was in the Rubens collection and is documented in the inventory of his estate after his death in 1640.

The composition creates a powerful diagonal with Prometheus's tormented body stretched across the canvas. Rubens renders the muscular anatomy with characteristic force, while Snyders' eagle is painted with remarkable naturalistic precision.

This painting is a collaboration between Rubens (the figure) and Frans Snyders (the eagle). It has been conserved with attention to maintaining the different painting styles of the two masters. The canvas has been relined. The dramatic contrast between the luminous body and dark setting remains powerful.