Peter Paul Rubens, 'Aurora abducting Cephalus', about 1636-7

In this lively oil sketch, Rubens experiments with ideas for the design and composition of one of a series of paintings on a hunting theme commissioned by Philip IV of Spain to decorate his hunting lodge, Torre de la Parade, just outside Madrid. Rubens’s assistants would have used the sketch as a model from which they could complete the full-scale picture.

Diana, the goddess of hunting, gave the huntsman Cephalus a magic dog and spear, both shown by his side here as he reclines beneath a tree, shaded from the light. Lost in love at first sight, Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, steps from her golden chariot and runs towards the handsome young man. Her white horses rear up, anxious to be gone. Rubens has captured Aurora’s eager rush towards Cephalus, leaning to him with outstretched arms. Her golden robes toss and fly behind her, and her gauzy underskirt clings to her bare legs as she runs, oblivious of the undergrowth. Cephalus sits up, his arms also outstretched, apparently eager to go with her – but in the best-known version of the story, told by the Roman poet Ovid in the Metamorphoses, he remains faithful to his wife, Procris, and Aurora leaves alone.

Rubens has made his Aurora a strong, spirited and very human goddess, running through the undergrowth on sturdy legs, reminiscent of Titian’s Diana in his great picture The Death of Actaeon. Titian was a great influence not only on Rubens but on Flemish and European art in general in the seventeenth century.

Two other artists of the same period – Nicolas Poussin and Claude, both French and living in Rome – were also working on paintings on the theme. In a dramatic painting entitled Cephalus and Aurora, Poussin shows the reason for Cephalus’ rejection of the goddess: a cherub holding up Procris’ portrait. Cephalus – his pose is based on Bacchus in Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne – turns away and disentangles himself from Aurora’s clinging hands, a detail not included by Ovid. Claude depicted a later part of the story in Landscape with Cephalus and Procris reunited by Diana, his work of 1645. Procris, afraid that Cephalus was being unfaithful to her, went out into the forest to watch him. He mistook her for a wild animal rustling leaves and threw the spear with deadly aim, accidentally killing her. Claude’s idyllic landscape scene shows the moment that Diana brings Procris back to life, reconciles the couple and warns them of the dangers of jealousy and unfaithfulness.

There is another oil sketch by Rubens in the Prado, Madrid, which shows the later part of the story, with Cephalus and Procris together after her revival. Also in Madrid is a painting by Peeter Symons, a little-known assistant of Rubens. The picture is based on the sketch of the second scene, but Rubens himself never painted a definitive picture of the story.