Rubens and Virgil

Abstract

In the John G. Johnson collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art there is a sketch by Rubens which has not attracted much attention although it appears to be a fine original from the later period of the master. It was published in Valentiner's catalogue of the collection under the title The Wounded Stag and appears with the same title again in the short revised catalogue published by Henri Marceau in 1941 (no. 663). When I began to prepare the critical catalogue for the book Rubens in America I decided that this title misinterpreted the subject, evoking, as it did, visions of a type of sentimental genre-painting, perhaps influenced by Courbet's hunting scenes, which was popular in the second half of the nineteenth century, but was incompatible with Rubens' attitude toward subject matter. The picture of a wounded stag taking refuge and apparently dying in the lap of a distracted maiden was surely taken from a definite literary source. There was no sacred legend known to me which would fit the picture. S...