エウロペの略奪

A young woman is carried out to sea on the back of a white bull, her scarf whipping in the wind as the shore falls away. Titian does not soften what is happening to her.

The story behind the painting

Titian painted The Rape of Europa around 1560 to 1562 as one of his poesie, a series of mythological paintings for Philip II of Spain. The story comes from Greek myth: Zeus took the form of a bull, enticed Europa onto his back, then carried her across the sea to Crete. Ovid's Metamorphoses is one source, but a more direct inspiration may be a description of a painted Europa in Achilles Tatius's novel Leucippe and Clitophon, printed in Italian in Venice in 1546. Its dolphins, scarf, Cupid and Europa's position on the bull are all echoed here.

What to look for

Europa lies sprawled on her back across the bull, just off the shore of her homeland, clothes in disarray, her legs suggesting she is precariously balanced or even kicking to free herself. She holds up a red silk scarf, and an attendant on the distant shore wears a similar garment. Two putti chase her through the sky, another rides a dolphin, and a sea monster lurks in the foreground. The bull is snowy white with a powerful neck, close to Ovid's description. Wikidata records the size as 185 by 205 cm; Wikipedia gives 178 by 205 cm.

Meaning and intent

The title uses the old sense of rape as abduction, but the painting makes the threat plain. The act of sexual violence is not shown, yet it is implied by Europa's posture and fearful expression, by the waving scarf and by the monster below. Titian seems to stress that this is a scene of force, not romance. The scholar Yael Even has suggested that Titian may have taken on the subject less from attachment to it than to assert his abilities as a painter.

Legacy

Philip V of Spain later gave the picture to the French ambassador, and it entered the Orleans Collection in Paris for most of the eighteenth century. Rubens made a faithful copy in 1628 to 1629, now in the Prado. Bernard Berenson bought the painting for Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1896, and it remains in her museum in Boston; it was not taken in the museum's 1990 theft. In 2021 to 2022 the museum reunited all six of Titian's poesie for the first time since the sixteenth century.