The Fall of Phaeton

The Fall of Phaeton (c. 1604-05) at the National Gallery of Art was painted during Rubens's Italian years, depicting the mythological youth who rashly took control of his father Apollo's sun chariot and lost control of the fiery horses, scorching the earth before Jupiter struck him down with a thunderbolt. The aerial subject — figures falling through sky, horses plunging, the world burning below — gave the young Rubens an opportunity to demonstrate his mastery of foreshortened figures in extreme positions, a test of anatomical knowledge and compositional inventiveness that Italian masters had established as a benchmark of technical achievement. Rubens had studied the Sistine ceiling's falling figures and the examples in Raphael's Stanze with the same systematic intensity he brought to all his Italian models; the Fall of Phaeton translates this study into a composition that is simultaneously a formal exercise and a mythological narrative of compelling dramatic force. The NGA's Washington holding gives North American visitors direct access to this early demonstration of Rubens's exceptional pictorial intelligence.

The composition creates a dramatic cascade of falling horses and figures tumbling through a stormy sky. Rubens' powerful modeling of the horses and Phaeton in extreme foreshortening demonstrates his early mastery of complex aerial compositions.

This version of the Fall of Phaeton, distinct from the NGA painting, has been conserved over the centuries. Comparison with the later, reworked version provides insight into Rubens's evolving approach to the composition. The canvas has been relined and cleaned.