The Rape of Europa

Titian's Rape of Europa, painted around 1559-1562 and now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, was the last of the poesie he completed for Philip II of Spain — a series of six mythological paintings based on Ovid's Metamorphoses that constitute the most ambitious cycle of narrative mythological painting in the history of European art. Rubens, who saw the Europa in the royal Spanish collection and copied it carefully, called it the most beautiful painting he had ever seen. The composition shows the terrified Europa clinging to the white bull (Jupiter in disguise) as it plunges into the sea bearing her to Crete, her companions receding on the shore behind her. The radical tilting of the composition, with Europa's body at a diagonal that seems to mirror the breaking waves, the loosely brushed atmospheric sky, and the extraordinary treatment of the white bull's back against the blue-green sea — all achieve an integration of figure and landscape that had no precedent in European painting and that anticipated the atmospheric freedoms of Turner and the Impressionists.

Titian's extraordinarily free late brushwork creates a vision of cosmic erotic energy, with the swirling sea, tumbling putti, and terrified Europa painted with an abandon that dissolves form into pure color and movement.

The Rape of Europa is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, where it has been since Isabella Gardner purchased it in 1896. The painting was part of the "poesie" series for Philip II of Spain. It was carefully cleaned in the early 2000s, revealing the extraordinary freedom of Titian's brushwork. Rubens painted a famous copy, confirming the work's influence. The canvas has been relined but is in generally good condition, with the vibrant blues and flesh tones well-preserved.