Landscape with Philemon and Baucis, from Large Landscapes
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.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
223264
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
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 t...