Caesar van Everdingen was one of the few artists to paint the rape of Europa from the point of view of the shore, of her companions, who are thus much more prominent than Europa herself. He never sold the painting in his lifetime. You can find more details about it here and here.

The bull looks definitely lecherous in Simon Vouet’s Rape of Europa. The look on Europa’s face is quite remarkable too.

The look on the face of the bull is priceless on this undated painting by Gillis Coignet (1542–1599), which is currently for sale at Jack Kilgore’s art gallery in New York.

Jean Cousin the Elder gives Europa an envoy of putti or Cupids riding on dolphins. These were common in antiquity, but not much used later on, and I don’t know any other Europa accompanied by them.

Guido Cagnacci’s Rape of Europa doesn’t look as if it had been painted around 1650, but it was. The composition is very uncommon, but this really seems to be the complete picture, not just a detail. Of course it may be that it was cropped at some point of its existence, that has happened to many paintings including Rembrandt’s Night Watch.

Il Ratto di Europa is part of the collezione Molinari Predella in Castenaso in the province of Bologna.

Europa was a Phoenician princess, daughter of Agenor and Telephassa. Zeus approached her in the shape of a white bull as she was playing on the beach with her friends. The girls decorated the beautiful and apparently tame animal with flowers, and finally Europa climbed on his back. Now the bull suddenly took to the sea and swam with her to Crete, where he assumed human shape. She bore him three sons, Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. Later, she married Asterios, the king of Crete, and he adopted her sons.

Europa is the patron goddess of this blog. You will see her a lot.

The Rape of Europa is one of the classical topics of European art, dating back to at least the 7th century BC. This image is a detail from a painting by Nöel-Nicolas Coypel, who lived from 1690 to 1734 and was quite popular in his time. Among his surviving paintings are a Bath of Diana and a Birth of Venus, so maybe he liked painting people in or near water.