The myth of Europa, so popular with ancient authors, has also provided a constant source of inspiration for artists. It has been portrayed many times in every conceivable type of material, ranging from vases, mosaics, terracottas, tomb reliefs and coins in antiquity, to paintings, prints, sculpture, majolica (glazed or enamelled earthenware much produced in the Renaissance, particularly in Central Italy) and on cassoni (wedding chests) in the Renaissance, and later on porcelain and enamel snuff boxes.
Shortly before Titian painted his version, Correggio, Parmigianino and Dosso Dossi, three of the greatest Emilian painters of the early sixteenth century (the towns of Bologna and Parma in the province of Emilia-Romagna were major art centres), followed the prevailing norm in painting the myth as an Arcadian idyll. This essentially sedentary image was adopted by Titian’s fellow Venetian, Paolo Veronese, who depicted Europa as a princess, full of keen expectation, bejewelled as befits a regal bride. Veronese’s painting, which hung in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, was to prove immensely popular and influential.
Titian also knew the myth well and had the chance to discuss it with his literary friends, who would have told him of its source. In addition, he had numerous artistic precedents to draw on. As so often, he created an entirely original composition, one of the boldest in his entire oeuvre. Titian wanted to portray the key moment when Europa realizes her fate. The fact that art historians still argue whether the painting is a tragic or light-hearted interpretation of the myth shows the ambiguous nature of Titian’s interpretation. His composition is highly original and it seems exceedingly unlikely that he could have been aware of two similar representations of the myth in late fifteenth-century Florence: a terracotta relief from Luca della Robbia’s workshop and a beautiful pen and ink drawing by Filippino Lippi. They portray Europa on the back of the bull, her clothes and hair flying in the wind.
Titian himself must have felt very pleased with the painting, since he supervised the production of a copy in his workshop which was offered to the Emperor Maximilian (a Habsburg cousin of Philip II) in 1568 (the painting has been lost, though there is a copy by the seventeenth-century Flemish painter David Teniers). There is also a copy which belonged to the fourth Marquess of Hertford, a major benefactor of the Wallace Collection. But the most important copy of the Titian was executed by Rubens, who was privileged to study the painting in the Alcázar on his second visit to Madrid in 1628–9. Painters of the Bolognese school, in particular, seem to have been strongly influenced by the Titian composition, and Guido Reni’s version of the subject shows the same combination of fear and ecstasy. A late sixteenth-century bronze group by Giambologna displays a similar interest in drama and movement. Rembrandt’s version of the subject, though the composition differs from that of Titian, shares the same emotional intensity and the immediacy of the drama as Europa gazes back fearfully to the safety of the shore.
In general, however, the majority of later artists preferred to follow the lead of Veronese in their depictions of the myth, showing the princess as an almost childish figure, playfully picking flowers, while the beautiful, white bull is a creature from a fairy tale. She has tamed the bull with her flowers, and rides off to her fate full of optimism and, sometimes, even triumphant. Her maidens may be scared and shocked, but the princess is serene. In the eighteenth century, painters loved to depict light-hearted allegories of love, and numerous painters, notably Watteau and Boucher, with his seductive nudes, were inspired by the Veronese. Similarly, porcelain manufacturers, in particular, made free use of the image of Europa, a pretty woman, sometimes crowned, often playing with the bull. There is never any question of violence or rape.
Curiously, there does not seem to be a direct connection between Europa and the continent of Europe. The origin of the continent’s name is uncertain, possibly deriving from the Greek word eurus meaning wide or broad, and ops, meaning eye of face, hence wide-eyed or broad of aspect. The Ancient Greeks originally regarded Europa as an area comprising the province of Thrace but, by the time Strabo wrote his 17-volume Geographica in the late first century bc, he included the whole continent from the Straits of Hercules to the river Don. In the eighth century Christian forces fighting Muslims invading south-west France were known as Europenses, and Europe became associated with the Latin Church. A popular cartographic depiction of the continent in the sixteenth century as Europa Regina showed the continent from the Habsburg perspective as a standing queen, with the Iberian peninsula as her head wearing a crown and Bohemia as her heart (heretical Britain and Scandanavia were excluded). Europa Regina is surrounded by water, an allusion to the mythical Europa carried over the sea to Crete.
Recently, the myth of the Rape of Europa has been adopted by the European Union, and the image of the princess being abducted by the bull has become a semi-official symbol of the institution, a supranational personification of the European region. An image of Europa has appeared on a number of coins and banknotes. The image itself is open to numerous interpretations, mostly concerning the theme of peace and unity triumphing over hardship, with the bull seen as a dangerous animal, undermining this concept of peace and unity, or as a liberator, freeing Europa by taking her across the sea from Sidon/Asia to Crete/Europe.
There have been many translations of the myth, and one written by A. E. Watts in 1954 best conveys Ovid’s original.
The poem begins with Jupiter commanding Mercury:
‘Dear son, and servant faithful to obey,
Swoop down to earth post-haste your wonted way;
And turning leftward, where those regions are,
That men call Sidon, ’neath your mother’s star,
Drive from the hills, and bring beside the sea
The royal herd that crops the upland lea.’
So said, so done: the herd grazed before
The mountain heights, was headed to the shore,
Just where the great king’s daughter, day by day,
With train of Tyrian maids was wont to play.
’Tis ill when love and lordship in one mind
Together dwell. His sceptred state is hurled
The three-forked fire, whose nod convulse the world,
Among the herd, transformed in voice and mien,
Treading the sward, a comely bull was seen,
In colour like untrodden snows, that last,
Unmelted by the south wind’s watery blast.
The muscles bulged upon his neck; the fall
Of dewlap was superb; the horns were small;
Seeming handmade, such work as craftsmen do,
They gleamed like agate as the light shone through;
A brow of peace, wherein no terror lie,
A calm and unintimidating eye.
‘How fair, how friendly!’ thought Agenor’s child;
Yet feared at first to touch him, though so mild,
Soon, to her lover’s joy, she nearer drew,
And gave his milk-white mouth sweet flowers to chew.
He kissed her hands, as earnest of the sum
Of hoped-for joys, scarce waiting what’s to come;
And now on grass he leaped and played; now rolled
On sand, to show his white on green and gold;
Offering the maiden, as her fear grew less,
His breast to stroke,
His horns with flowers to dress;
And she, unweeting what form could hide,
Upon his back at last made bold to ride.
Then, sidling seaward, that four-footed cheat
Came step by step where land and water meet;
Then out to sea! While the fair prize he bore
Looked back in panic at the fading shore.
One hand was on his horn; one pressed his back;
Her robes, wind-wafted, fluttered in her track.
From the point of view of Titian’s interpretation, what is interesting is how little of the text relates to Europa’s actual rape, the moment of maximum drama that Titian chose to depict. Most of Ovid�
��s description concerns the appearance of Jupiter as a bull on the seashore and how he is feted and garlanded by the princess and her maidens. Watts’ translation of Ovid referring to Jupiter as ‘that four-footed cheat’ makes clear the god’s intentions, and Europa ‘looking back in panic at the fading shore’ seems to indicate that she is fearful of her abduction. However, an earlier reference to her wish ‘of hoped-for joys, scarce waiting what’s to come’ states quite unequivocally that she is a willing accomplice, and this seems to sum up Titian’s image of Europa where her desire overcomes any initial fear.
4
The Spanish Habsburgs and the Alcázar in Madrid
Although the reign of Philip II had seen the Spanish Empire reach its greatest extent, and Spain’s armies had proved all but invincible on the European mainland, this hegemony had come at great cost (the country had gone bankrupt on four occasions during the late sixteenth century). Consequently, as the new century dawned, there was a widespread feeling that the country was in urgent need of reform. A number of reformers, known as arbitristas, made a genuine attempt to analyse ways of creating an economic recovery and promoting social and moral regeneration. Their ideas involved cutting government expenditure, reforming the tax system, encouraging immigration into Castile, the Spanish heartland, improving transport and industry and arranging the more equal distribution of the economic costs among the five constituent kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula (from 1580 until 1640 Portugal was a part of Spain). It was to be Spain’s tragedy that these ideas should never have been implemented.
The country that benefited most from Spain’s inability to reform was its neighbour France. After suffering from a series of civil wars between Catholics and Huguenots in the later sixteenth century, the nation was reunited by Henry IV, who converted to Catholicism in 1593, supposedly making the cynical statement that ‘Paris was worth a mass’. His finance minister Maximilien de Bethune, Duke of Sully, centralized the administration, overhauled the tax system, reduced expenditure and consolidated the state’s debt. These reforms, together with Henry’s concerted effort to placate the rebellious nobility by awarding them titles and privileges, led to the revival of France. Henry’s son Louis XIII appointed the immensely able Cardinal Richelieu as his chief minister and it was the cardinal who led France into the Thirty Years’ War on the side of the Protestant forces of Holland and Sweden against Spain and Austria. France and her allies won a series of notable victories, and Richelieu’s policies were continued by his equally talented successor Cardinal Mazarin and resulted in France making a number of important territorial gains in Flanders and Catalonia at the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659.
A year later Louis XIV entered his majority (he had been king since 1643) and his aggressive attempts to extend France’s borders into the Spanish Netherlands led to a series of wars with Spain. France’s ability to pay for these wars was largely due to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the able and energetic Minister of Finance. Like Sully, he continued to reform the tax system, punishing corrupt officials employed in collecting taxes, reorganized industry and commerce, increased the manufacture of high quality goods and built up the navy. Colbert’s reforms were dedicated to the basic principle that the nation with the most money would be the most powerful, and the success of his reforms meant that by 1700 the strength of France was feared by all other European nations, particularly the much-weakened Spanish.
Although Spain had failed to implement much-needed reforms, and suffered a number of defeats at the hands of the French, nevertheless the seventeenth century was a golden age in terms of the arts. Indeed, many of Spain’s most remarkable literary works actually gloried in this failure to reform. The picaresque novel, perhaps the most important literary development in seventeenth-century Spain, celebrates the craftiness of idle, low-born rogues triumphing over the idealistic world of hidalgos, or gentlemen. Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, published in 1605 and 1615, is both a comedy and a satirical commentary on the rigidity of Spanish society, with its obsession with class, where a well-meaning hidalgo, deceived by the chicaneries of the world, ends up tilting at windmills. The three major playwrights, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina and Pedro Calderon de la Barca, wrote conventional morality plays depicting conflicts between all classes of society, imbued with good humour and cynicism.
Despite her economic problems, gold and silver continued to pour into Spain from the New World, and, although this led to inflation, the city of Seville, in particular, which enjoyed a monopoly on all trade with the New World, boomed. Diego de Velázquez and Bartolomé Murillo, two of the great names in Spanish seventeenth-century painting, both hailed from Seville, and Francisco de Zurbarán, the third leading painter in Spain, spent much of his career in the Andalusian port. However, it was Madrid, the home of the court and therefore the centre of patronage, that gradually took over from Seville as the main artistic centre. Unlike Philip II, his successors lived in the Alcázar, the main royal palace in their capital, and Velázquez was one of a number of ambitious painters who came to Madrid to advance their careers. At the Spanish Court he was welcomed by his fellow-Andalusian Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivares. Olivares was chief minister of Philip IV and introduced the promising artist to the king. It was to prove one of the most successful unions of artist and patron in the history of art.
Philip IV (1621–65) rivalled his grandfather Philip II as the greatest art collector of his day. This was in contrast with his father Philip III (1598–1621), who made a negligible contribution to the arts, the only painting that excited the king’s imagination being Titian’s Venus del Pardo (Paris, Louvre), the most overtly erotic of all his mythological works, for which he developed a passion. This was not for lack of opportunity; the king’s powerful chief minister, Francisco Gomez de Sandoval, Duke of Lerma, amassed some 1,400 paintings, many by the great Venetian artists of the sixteenth century, as well as commissioning a magnificent equestrian portrait of himself by the young Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens.
Owing to Philip III’s lack of interest in the arts, there is no record of the Rape of Europa during his reign and it is not until the 1620s that we begin to find accounts of the painting by notable visitors to Madrid. These included Charles, Prince of Wales, who came to Spain in 1623, and Cassiano del Pozzo in 1626, secretary to the papal ambassador Cardinal Francesco Barberini and a noted Roman connoisseur, who named it the Rape of Europa (Titian had originally entitled it Europa on the Bull). Rubens was the most important foreign artist to visit Madrid, and was strongly influenced by Titian’s painting. The Fleming executed a copy during his visit of 1628–9, while Velázquez, who worked for many years in the Alcázar as the court painter and palace marshal, included it in the background of one of his greatest works.
Philip IV, like his grandfather, kept the Rape of Europa and Titian’s other poesie away from public view, hanging them in the south-west corner of the Alcázar, where the king’s apartments were situated. These apartments looked on to a garden, known as the Garden of the Emperors, named after 25 statues of Roman emperors that were housed here, alongside bronzes by Leone Leoni of Philip II and his half-brother Don John of Austria. Juan Gomez de Mora, architect to Philip III, had constructed arched spaces round the garden at the beginning of the seventeenth century to protect the king and his family from the fierce summer sun. In these rooms Philip IV hung Titian’s erotic mythologies: the Rape of Europa and the other poesie, together with Venus and the Organ-player and Tarquin and Lucretia. They were joined by Venus with a Mirror, which was moved here from Philip IV’s bedroom.
Few people were allowed into these rooms, an exception being the famous collector Cassiano del Pozzo, who noted the number of nudes by Titian and Rubens. Philip’s Queen Elizabeth found the overt sexuality of Titian’s nudes so disturbing when she came to visit her husband that she ordered them to be covered over (her own apartments were in a separate quarter of the vast palace beyond the royal chapel of St Michael). The queen’s prudishness was almost certainly exacerba
ted by Philip’s numerous infidelities. Despite his lugubrious and melancholy appearance, so brilliantly captured by Velázquez, the king had a number of mistresses and was rumoured to have sired as many as 32 natural children. His son by Maria Ines Calderon, known as La Calderona, was even brought up as a royal prince. No doubt the queen imagined that her husband’s ardour was increased at the sight of Titian’s naked beauties. It was not only Titian’s nudes that the queen found offensive. In the early 1630s Rubens’ mildly erotic Diana and her Nymphs setting out for the Hunt was moved from the queen’s apartments to the summer ones of the king.
Not surprisingly, in the light of the queen’s reaction, Philip was careful who was allowed to view the Rape of Europa. He knew that many people in Counter-Reformation Spain, a highly conservative, Catholic society, disapproved of Titian’s mythological paintings. The poet and historian Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola, an influential figure at court in the early seventeenth century, was one of many to be scandalized by them. He recorded his feelings in a poem (despite its strongly disapproving tone the author had obviously studied the paintings closely):
Invite others to visit the breasts
In the grand city [Madrid] filled with silk and gold and amazing paintings
Which by the laws of talent are worth a fortune
Only God knows what they are worth
Leda on the swan, Europa on the bull
Venus wantonly unseemly
Promiscuous satyrs, fleeing nymphs
Diana immodestly among her companions
That she would keep them as living beings
He who allowed his eyes to judge
As he judges them as lewd
The Rape of Europa Page 6
