A Boy as Ganymede

Maes's Boy as Ganymede from 1678 depicts a child in the guise of the Trojan youth carried to Olympus by Zeus's eagle—a portrait historié type that was fashionable in Dutch and Flemish portraiture for young sitters whose beauty and youth suited the association with divine favor and celestial elevation. Child portraits in mythological guise allowed painters to combine flattery of parents with classical learning and the technical ambition of history painting, creating works that satisfied multiple aspirations simultaneously. Maes's late portrait manner—warm, elegant, influenced by Van Dyck—gave these fanciful child images a polish and grace appropriate to the wealthy Amsterdam families who commissioned them. The Ganymede subject's connotations of divine election provided an acceptably classical frame for the family pride that motivated such commissions.

The child is rendered with Maes's characteristic smoothness and refinement, the mythological costume adding a decorative element to what is essentially a portrait. The lighter palette and polished technique are characteristic of his late style.