The Abduction of Europa

The Abduction of Europa retells the founding myth in which Zeus, transfigured into a white bull, lures the Phoenician princess Europa onto his back and bears her across the sea to Crete. Painted in 1716, this early masterpiece by Jean François de Troy is drenched in the high-keyed colour of nascent Rococo: Europa’s inky-blue cloak, the pearl-pink drapery of her companions and the shimmering water create a scene that is at once mythological and frankly decorative. De Troy, soon to become first painter to the king and director of the French Academy in Rome, here anticipates the lightness and sensuality that would define French painting for a generation.