The Rape of Europe

The Rape of Europe (1868) at the Musee Gustave Moreau depicts the myth of Zeus disguised as a white bull who carries the Phoenician princess Europa across the sea to Crete. One of the most widely treated subjects in Western painting — from Titian's celebrated version to works by Veronese, Rembrandt, and Claude — the subject combined female beauty, divine deception, and the visual possibilities of a white bull against sea and sky. Moreau's 1868 version belongs to the period just before his mature Symbolist works, when he was still refining the densely ornamental approach that would crystallize in the 1876 Apparition. The sea crossing creates a compositional framework of movement that is unusual in Moreau's more static symbolic compositions, and the bull's massive white form against the Aegean provided a strong coloristic and formal contrast.

The subject requires compositional balance between the powerful white bull in the foreground, the figure of Europa upon its back, and the sea they are crossing. Moreau handles the bull's smooth white coat with care, distinguishing its texture from the water and from Europa's draperies.