The Abduction of Europa

1716

Jean François de Troy

Artist, French, 1679 - 1752

A bare-chested, blond woman sits sideways on a muscular, large, white bull, who charges into an ocean while three women look on in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or peachy skin and rosy cheeks. The bull is being pulled to our left by a winged, nude, baby-like putto wading into the water. The putto has pudgy arms, a round tummy, and short, blond, curly hair. He looks back over his shoulder and smiles as he reaches along a garland of leaves and flowers, used to pull the bull. The bull turns his head to look over our left shoulder with bright, golden eyes. His front legs plunge into the azure-blue water. Rings of flowers encircle his short, steel-gray horns. The woman riding atop, Europa, leans across the bull’s neck and one hand clutches one of the bull’s horns. She looks and gestures with her other hand to the group behind the bull, to our right. Europa’s blond hair is woven with a deep pink ribbon. Her eyes are slitted as she looks down her nose, her pink lips open. Pale, shimmering yellow fabric covers her legs over sandaled feet. She sits on a rose-pink cloth that also billows up behind her. She wears two pearl bracelets on her gesturing hand. The three women looking on sit and stand near a tree trunk in a dense wooded area in the lower right quadrant of the painting. Their mouths are open, their hair bound, and they wear flowing robes of bronze orange, royal blue, lavender gray, or pale mint green. One woman has dark brown hair and sits with one elbow propped on a tree root.  Her hands are clasped and she wears gold bracelets. Another woman leans across her lap, her arms outstretched toward Europa, her back to us. The third woman stands and leans in behind this pair, also reaching out toward Europa. A deeply shaded rocky ground stretches across the bottom of the canvas, and a leafy tree extends off the top right corner. Dense vegetation becomes lighter and hazier in the distance, to our right. A bright dot of cream white surrounded by coral peach on the ocean’s horizon suggests the sun. In the top half of the picture, towering puffy clouds rise against a topaz-blue sky.

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This delightful painting by Jean-François de Troy, one of the leading painters in Paris in the first half of the 18th century, portrays the climactic moment from Ovid's story in Metamorphoses—the Abduction of Europa. Jupiter has transformed himself into a handsome bull to lure the lovely princess Europa onto his back and carry her away to Crete where she would bear him three sons. From Rembrandt to Claude Lorrain to Paul Gauguin, this seminal story captured the imagination of European artists for centuries.

Painted in rich colors with the light, refined brush characteristic of the works of de Troy's fellow members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Antoine Watteau and FranÃ\\u0083§ois Boucher, this painting offers a classical mythological subject in a rococo style that gracefully compliments the National Gallery's collection. De Troy studied with his father, François de Troy, professor and then director of the Académie. In 1699, he traveled to Italy, spending most of his time in Rome copying the masterpieces of antiquity and Italian art. He returned to Paris in 1706, and two years later became a full-fledged member of the Académie. A prodigiously talented painter, he completed ambitious decorations in churches, palaces, and public buildings in Paris, Versailles, Fontainebleau, and Marseilles. In 1738, he was granted the prestigious post of director of the Académie de France in Rome, a position he retained until his death. Although he was officially a history painter, he worked successfully across genres, inventing what are known as tableaux de modes to rival and succeed Watteau's more mysterious and ambiguous fêtes galantes.

The present painting may have been inspired by what is perhaps the most famous iteration of the theme, Titian's Europa, 1560–1562 (Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Boston). The latter work was given by Philip V, king of Spain, to the French ambassador, the duc de Gramont, in 1704. Titian's painting subsequently passed into the possession of the duc d'Orléans, with whose collection, on permanent display at the Palais Royal in Paris, de Troy was thoroughly conversant. Smaller in scale and less tragic in tone, de Troy's painting illustrates the same moment in the story and displays a similarly lush palette and dramatic drapery. The probable pendant to The Abduction of Europa, a representation of Cupid and Psyche, is signed and dated 1716, thus placing our picture within a period early in the artist's career during which he specialized in cabinet-sized pictures of erotically charged mythological subjects.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 54


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Chester Dale Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall: 65.7 x 82.2 cm (25 7/8 x 32 3/8 in.)

  • Accession

    2010.115.1


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Vivet collection, Château de Bussy; (sale, Hôtel de ventes de Senlis SARL, Paris, 17 October 2010, no. 21); purchased by (Saint-Honoré Art Consulting, Paris) for NGA.

Associated Names

Inscriptions

center right on the tree trunk: de Troy / filius / 1716

Wikidata ID

Q20177779


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