The Rape of Europa

"The Rape of Europa" of 1644 depicts the Ovidian episode in which Jupiter, transformed into a bull, abducts the Phoenician princess Europa across the sea to Crete — one of the most frequently painted mythological subjects in European art from the Renaissance onward. La Hyre's treatment, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, belongs to a small group of his mythological paintings that are not associated with the Hôtel Lambert cycle and therefore represent independent engagements with classical subject matter for unknown patrons or contexts. The subject involved the two elements most challenging for La Hyre's compositional instincts: marine landscape and female figures in states of emotional extremity — fear, excitement, and the erotic ambiguity of a divine abduction. His treatment moderates the erotic charge typical of Italian and Flemish treatments toward a more compositionally formal and emotionally restrained reading appropriate to his classical aesthetic. The Houston acquisition has made the work a regular point of reference in American exhibitions of seventeenth-century French painting, where it demonstrates La Hyre's capacity for mythological subjects outside his better-known allegorical series.

The Europa composition requires La Hyre to manage the complex relationship between the bull carrying Europa, the sea around them, and possibly the Phoenician shore receding behind or Europa's attendants watching from the beach. The curved form of the bull in water, contrasted with the more upright figure of Europa clinging to his back, creates a compositional tension between horizontal marine movement and vertical human distress. The palette must accommodate both the cool greens and blues of the sea and the warm tones of the figures.