The Feast of Acheloüs, by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder.
Rubens painted the figures, Brueghel the richly detailed setting.
A feast, indeed.
In the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Click on “Fullscreen” and zoom or download.
Learn something new every day. I never knew they did stuff together. I’m a huge Breughel fan.
I don’t know if Breughel did many collaborative works, but I know that Rubens did several, like this amazing piece, Prometheus Bound, here in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in which Rubens again did the figure and Frans Synders painted the eagle. (This thing is eight feet high!)
Rubens was exceptional in his hiring of other artist-specialists with whom to collaborate. The Met usually has another collaboration with Breughel on display, a garden of eden scene lush with animals and foliage by Jan Breughel. Other collaborations included Jan Fyt who specialized in dogs, birds and other animals and Snyders who was great with the larger, more ferocious game like lions and tigers. Some of these were studio assistants who developed specialized repertoires. It must have been quite a workshop, especially when it was under the management of the teenaged Anthony van Dyck whose imitation of the Rubens style at one point was so good that it still confuses experts today.
Thanks, Daniel!
The link for Rubens and Brueghel:’A Working Friendship’ with audio. On behalf of the past exhibition on July 5–September 24, 2006 at the Getty Center.
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/rubens_brueghel/homepage.html
Fantastic information. Thanks everyone!
