Hendrick Goltzius: Mercurius, 1611.
This Mercury has exactly the same dimensions (204 × 120 cm) as the Minerva the artist painted in the same year, they are obviously intended as a pair.
Hendrick Goltzius: Minerva, 1611.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Bust of Camilla Barbadori (1619)
CAMILLA BARBADORI was already ten years dead when Bernini made this portrait bust, possibly commissioned by her son Carlo Barberini, who as the elder became head of the Barberini family when his father died. The other son, Maffeo, would some years later become Pope Urban VIII and is nowadays mostly known for his controversy with Galilei.
The bust is now located at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.
After his marriage, the newly appointed court painter Rubens started the construction of a new house of his own design in the Vaartstraat (now the Wapper), based on his studies of Italian palaces. It was finished in 1610. He painted The Abduction of Ganymede not long afterwards. It is now located in the Prado.
Rubens painted several versions of Susanna and the Elders. This is the first one, from 1607/8. It measures 94×66cm and is located in the Galleria Borghese.
Artemisia Gentileschi: Self-Portrait as a Martyr, around 1615, when she was in her early twenties.
A hundred years after Emperor Maximilian’s death Rubens painted him in a fancy armor on a 140×101 cm oak panel. By 1772 this picture was in the Hapsburg gallery, it now hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Rubens started this painting of Venus, Cupid, Bacchus and Ceres in 1612 and finished it in 1613. It measures 200×141 cm and now hangs in Kassel in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen.
Rubens executed this painting after his stay with the Gonzaga at Mantua, where he saw the Crouching Venus that later came into the possession of Sir Peter Lely and is now known under his name.
The whole allegory should probably be understood in context, and contrast, with the Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus motif: Venus and Cupid (love), Bacchus (wine) and Ceres (food) all contributing to a good life.
Boreas is the personification of the North wind, Oreithyia the daughter of the mythical King Erechtheus of Athens. He first tried to woo her, when that didn’t work, he abducted her. She bore him two daughters and two winged sons who joined the Argonauts.
Apart from this painting by Rubens (around 1615–20) and one by Evelyn de Morgan nearly four hundred years later, this myth has not made too much impact on newer art.
