Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Alpheus and Arethusa
Moses van Uyttenbroeck (Dutch, c. 1590-1648)
1626
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 45 × 58 cm (17 3/4 × 22 7/8 in.); Framed: 45.1 × 57.8 × 6.4 cm (17 3/4 × 22 3/4 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Bequest of Donald and Carol Asher
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This intimate painting depicts a scene from Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, an ancient Roman poem, in which the river god Alpheus menaces Arethusa, a nymph, as she bathes. Here, the hulking Alpheus climbs the riverbank in pursuit of the stout nymph, who looks back in fear as she flees. With his lush landscapes and unidealized figures, Uyttenbroeck belonged to the generation of artists who influenced the young Rembrandt van Rijn. Their work inspired the dramatic poses and gestures that Rembrandt adopted as a means of conveying emotion.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
