Wrapped in a flowing red cape, the warrior Meleager thrusts his spear into the shoulder of a massive boar. The ferocious creature — seemingly undaunted by a pair of hounds latched onto its bristled hide — has turned to confront head-on its human adversary. Meleager’s blow will prove to be fatal to the boar, but the beast has proven itself as a fearsome foe. Beneath its imposing hooves lie the disemboweled carcass of a hound and the prostrate corpse of the hunter Ancaeus.
The story of the Calydonian boar hunt was told and retold during antiquity — most famously in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. When King Oeneus of Calydon failed to honor the goddess Diana with offerings, she released a terrifying boar on his land. The king’s son, Meleager, assembled a group of renowned warriors to slay the beast. Several of the huntsmen were killed or maimed before Meleager finally defeated the boar. He presented its head as a trophy to his beloved, the huntress Atalanta, who is seen behind Meleager, with bow in hand.
Peter Paul Rubens created this painting a few years after an extended stay in Italy. He drew from ancient sarcophagi and statues he had seen there for the poses of many of the figures. For example, the boar seen in profile was taken directly from a well-known marble in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. Rubens’s appropriation of iconic images from antiquity was intended to resonate with learned viewers. For the figures on horseback, Rubens borrowed from his Renaissance predecessors, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. But Rubens’s dynamic and inventive interpretation of the hunt was wholly his own. With this painting, he established the theme of the epic combat between man and animal, a subject to which he would return throughout his career.
Credit Line: Text courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program (CC BY 4.0).
Product Information
Expect crisp detail and vivid color from our giclée process fine art prints. We use archival pigment inks on cotton fiber paper to achieve a wide color gamut, deep blacks and beautiful tonal transitions. Unlike posters, they will not fade or yellow, but maintain their original quality for as long as you own them.
How to Frame
Historical artworks were produced in whatever shapes and sizes best suited the artists and their patrons, and these rarely correspond to the proportions of modern, mass-produced frames. Most reproductions sold on the web are cropped to an arbitrary standard, compromising the integrity of the original artwork. We solve this by using accent borders to make up any differences in proportion.Framing may be as simple as inserting the print into a standard size frame with the borders showing. In many cases, our customers choose to have them matted. Borders allow space for framers to mount the print while covering little, if any, of the artwork. Our images are sized to provide desirable mat widths in common frames.Sizes 9” x 12”, 12” x 16”, and 16” x 20” are designed to be matted in larger frames, such as 11” x 14”, 16” x 20” and 20” x 24”, respectively. Larger prints may be matted in frames of equal size, the borders corresponding to the shape of the mat. Where the artwork is unusually square or narrow, other sizes may be preferred.If our sizing does not meet your requirements, we provide customization free of charge. Please contact us to discuss the details.
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