The Rape of Europa
Medium
Etching and drypoint; third state of seven (Mannocci)
Dimensions
sheet: 8 1/16 x 10 3/16 in. (20.5 x 25.8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926
Accession Number
26.72.93
Tags
Art Historical Context
Claude Lorrain, the renowned 17th-century French artist (Claude Gellée, 0–1682),fully captures the classical myth of *The Rape of Europa* in 1634 etching andpoint. Drawing from Ovid's *Metamorphoses*, the scene depicts the beautiful Europa being abducted by Zeus, disguised as a white bull, amid a serene yet dramatic landscape of cows, trees, and distant. Lorrain, celebrated for his luminous, idealized views inspired by the Roman countryside, infuses the composition with a poetic harmony of light and space, blending mythology with his signature Baroque landscape style. Printed as the third sta...
About the Artist
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) · 1604–1682
Claude Gellée was born around 1600 in the village of Chamagne in the Duchy of Lorraine, from which he would take the professional name by which history knows him: Claude Lorrain. Orphaned young, he traveled south to Rome as a teenager, eventually finding his way into the Naples workshop of Goffredo Wals before apprenticing with the Roman landscapist and fresco painter Agostino Tassi around 1622. F...