Schelte Adamsz. Bolswert (Dutch, active in Flanders, c. 1586–1659)
after Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640)
published by Gillis Hendricx (Flemish, active c. 1642-1677)
Landscape with Philemon and Baucis, from Large Landscapes
INV-2232
Schelte Adamsz. Bolswert (Dutch, active in Flanders, c. 1586–1659)
after Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640)
published by Gillis Hendricx (Flemish, active c. 1642-1677)c. 1638
Landscape with Philemon and Baucis, from Large Landscapes
Schelte Adamsz. Bolswert (Dutch, active in Flanders, c. 1586–1659) after Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640) published by Gillis Hendricx (Flemish, active c. 1642-1677) →engravingpaper
Date
c. 1638
Medium
Engraving in black on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 46.8 × 64 cm (18 7/16 × 25 1/4 in.); Sheet, trimmed within platemark: 48.2 × 64.6 cm (19 × 25 7/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Anne-Marie Logan
Toward the end of his life, Peter Paul Rubens realized a series of six large landscape prints, all but one engraved by Schelte Adamsz. Bolswert. The genre of landscape painting had become especially important to Rubens in his final decade, when he purchased a country estate and retired from city and court life. Though artists more typically represent Philemon and Baucis, the modest and elderly couple from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, when they receive Jupiter and Mercury as dinner guests, here we see the destructive forces of nature at Jupiter’s command with the gods and their humble hosts ascending to a mountain top at the viewer’s left.