Coast View with the Abduction of Europa

Against a wide seacoast under the evening sky, the myth of Europa unfolds as a detail in the vast landscape: Zeus, in the form of a white bull, carries the princess Europa away across the sea while her companions gesture from the shore, and in the waves Neptune’s chariot and escorting sea gods ride beside the abducted maiden. Claude Lorrain set the whole story in the light that was his true subject — the low sun gilding the water, the headland, and the distant ships, so that the pagan tale becomes an incident in an ideal vision of the Roman Campagna. Painted about 1645, in the middle of his career, the canvas shows the balance of architecture, sea and sky, and the atmospheric perspective that made him the model of landscape painting for two centuries. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.