Philolog

Although Rembrandt would be unlikely to know the long myth tradition he was more or less following, probably by far the most famous extant ancient image of Europa is on a Greek vase; that of the Tarquinian Red figure Attic stamnos, circa 480 BCE, now in the Tarquinia Museum, which shows the latent eroticism in the story by having the moment before she is abducted when she puts her hand on the almost-smiling bull’s horn. The Greek artist has left no doubt about the outcome: although she runs alongside and behind the bull in the two-dimensional scene, the bull’s massive testes are between her running legs and its sexual member is directly between her stride. Most important, however, the horn she touches looks suspiciously like a membrum virile itself with curly pubic hair at its base, an idea Ovid hints at as Rembrandt may also in imitating this Roman poet. That this is deliberate on the Greek vase seems unmistakable; the viewer is easily persuaded of Zeus’ seducing intentions even if Europa is yet unaware.

As an historical myth with long-reaching roots, it is also persuasive at the deeper structural level that the orientalizing Greeks were somehow aware that earlier and even contemporary Phoenician religion venerated bulls (their Levantine gods El and Baal were both bulls in form) and that the same religion was justifiably infamous for its rampant fertility and sexual emphases. In addition, the Greeks called "Kadmean Letters" the modified Phoenician alphabet, circa 9th-8th c. BCE, brought to Greece in myth by Kadmos, the brother of Europa, while searching for his sister.(3) These historical echoes are retained in the myth and thus in the vase, which myth Rembrandt has retold in typical contemporary garb from his source in Ovid without alluding to these historical precedents.

Europa and the Bull - Red-Figure Stamnos, Tarquinia Museum, circa 480 BCE

Some earlier Greek vases, for example, in Archaic Black-Figure with popular versions of Europa and the Bull from the late 6th c. BCE (suggesting a literary myth source?) also show Europa grasping the horn in similar detail (although Maenads can also ride Dionysus in his bull form) but not as obviously a sexual image; other examples may not follow this possible early horn-grasping tradition.

Europa and the Bull, Black Figure Oinochoe circa 510-500 BCE, influenced by Athena Painter, former Robinson Collection, now University of Mississippi, MISS-1977-03-73

On the other hand, a 4th century Paestan Red-Figure vase below (Getty Museum # 81.AE.78, from 340 BCE, signed by Asteas but now returned to Italy) does show Europa riding on a white bull and with her hand touching the horn if not necessarily clearly grasping it. Although not visible in this image detail, sea figures like Scylla and Triton flank the bull on either side to conclusively prove it is the Europa myth painted. The white bull motif will addressed shortly.

Detail: Europa and the Bull, Asteas, Paestan circa 340 BCE, formerly Getty Museum, now Italy

Roman wall paintings and mosaics also represent this myth scene, as in the Pompeiian 1st. c CE painting from the House of Fatal Love (Regio IX, 5.18), now in the National Museum, Naples, an independent representation predating Ovid’s text. This painting is notable with a brown bull in a sacred landscape with columns and trees, itself probably derived from a Greek original. It is somewhat ambiguous in the Roman painting whether Europa is about to leave or has just arrived elsewhere, but the eyes and forelegs of the bull may give away his intentions of bolting, so it is most likely the deceptively lulling moment before the abduction when current inaction will suddenly be overwhelmed by action. Like Rembrandt's, the Roman version has a subdued sexuality but is also far less intense in nearly every other way than Rembrandt's. Rembrandt has memorialized the immediate moment of the abduction while perhaps hinting at both past (a disrupted playful beach party) and future (Kadmos' possible departure?).


Europa and the Bull, Roman Wall Painting, House of Fatal Love, Pompeii, c. 1st c. CE

With emotive strength and dark drama in his The Abduction of Europa, Rembrandt follows both Ovid verbally and Titian’s 1575-80 Europa visually because in many ways Rembrandt saw himself as Titian’s successor. His use of Ovid's literary version is perhaps more faithful than most other artists,(4) in that his bull surging through the water away from the shore is white - although Titian's bull is also white and thus Rembrandt is likely to be following Titian as much as Ovid.

Titian, Europa, circa 1575-80, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Similar to Rembrandt after him, whose introduction to Ovid would have been in Latin at his Leiden grammar school, Titian had easy access to Ovid's Metamorphoses - even an illustrated version published in Venice in 1497 - and texts from earlier translations.(5) Perhaps Rembrandt's schoolboy Latin gave him an added advantage here.

Detail of Europa and Jupiter as Bull

In both Titian and Rembrandt, Europa also grasps the bull’s horn and turns her fearful eyes back to shore, another Ovidian detail (Metamorphoses II.860-75), the very Ovidian moment that Rembrandt also paints, although Rembrandt has the scene beginning closer to shore with the spring grass and opening slowness of Ovid, showing how closely he follows the poem. Rembrandt's bull is also more realistic than Titian's - although Titian's is clearly garlanded a la Ovid - and Titian has introduced putti (or amoretti), not in Ovid's poem, emblematic of the amorous intents of Zeus. Thus Rembrandt chooses the very moment of abduction whereas Titian already has the bull moving rapidly from the receding shore of what may be the Venetian coast with a skyline similar to the Alto Adige Alps in the distance:

“Then she became less shy, he gave his breast to her caressing hands
and let her garland even his horns with new-plucked flowers. The princess,
innocent on whom she sat, climbed to his back; slowly the god stepped out
into the shallows of the beach and with false-footed sureness took to sea,
swimming against full tide, the girl his captured prize; she fearful,
turned to shoreward, set one hand on his broad back, the other held
one horn, her dress behind her fluttered in the wind.”

Detail of Europa grasping Bull's Horn

These images show the myth tradition of grasping the bull's horn predates Ovid's text because even the red-figure Greek vase has the same iconography. There must have been at least a literary precedent for this graphic idea around or before the fifth century BCE, since Ovid - who certainly appreciated the sexual implication given his poetic output - could not have seen the Tarquinian example, as its excavation from the Tarquinian necropolis would have only been in the last few centuries. The Roman wall painting from Pompeii does not even clearly present this detail, but Ovid must have seen or read other examples of this motif from older Greek and even Roman tradition that have either not survived or are as yet unidentified.

Rembrandt underscores the emotional tension as Europa’s fear is very present in her open mouth, furrowed brow and the way she tightly grips the bull’s flesh, bunched under her fingers as Ovid relates on the bull’s “broad back.” Westermann points out that “the idyllic shore and finely drawn waves compete for our attention with the woman’s terror.” (6)

It is well known that Rembrandt at this time regarded history painting – the visual narrative and interpretation of great stories of antiquity – as his most important artistic activity.(7) This very Dutch Europa even looks much like Saskia van Uylenburgh, the relative of Rembrandt’s dealer partner and landlord whom he will later court and marry, although it seems too early for him to have modeled her since their first meeting seems to have been in 1633, unless it was an earlier meeting. His Dutch Europa is decked in pearls fitting for the heiress of an equally Phoenician or Dutch maritime empire, but since pearls are also an attribute of Venus, the pearls may equally be an amatory emblem in an appropriate marine setting. Rembrandt has also highlighted the water around the bull and Europa's wind-streaming hair. reflecting the bull in the water and with a patch of blue sky under his rigid tail pointing backwards like an excited rudder to his flight.

Detail of Shipping Harbor with the Island of Tyre (as if in Northern Europe)

Rembrandt evokes Tyre as a busy Phoenician port – but more like a Dutch port – on a second background cape on the left with several ships and harbor cranes. This is historically valid as the Phoenicians were the most renowned seafaring mariners of the ancient world just as the Dutch were in their Golden Age of commerce. Tyre, the island city Alexander conquered by building a causeway to the offshore fortress, is even accurately connected here by arched bridges. The surprised family members and entourage – seemingly royal judging by the jewelry – wring their hands or throw them up in consternation. It may even be Europa's brother Kadmos in the horse-drawn cart who will rush off after his sister and found his own dynasty in Greece. But the white bull in the water, wild and free, contrasts greatly with the bridled and yoked gray draft horses idly watching the departing couple. Clearly this is no ordinary bull and not the least bit domesticated or even capable of being domesticated with his surge into the water.

Where does the white bull originate in the original Greek myth? Its color does not appear in the story as told by Apollodorus (III.1.1), Diodorus Siculus (IV.60.2 & V.78.1) or Hyginus (Fabula 178). Since the myth symmetry so appreciated by Ovid has Europa become Minos' father in due time, perhaps the white bull of Ovid's poem (since the Roman painting above has a brown bull and it predates Ovid) is intended as a deliberate link to the other divine white bull of myth, although it may not be an Ovidian innovation or deliberate allusion if other prior examples like the above 4th c. Getty vase followed a tradition as yet unidentified. This is the one that Poseidon brought to Minos in Crete out of the Cretan water for sacrifice, although he disobeys and his wife Pasiphae lusts after it, producing the monstrous Minotaur. It seems white bulls run strongly in the story of this Phoenician-originated family. There is at least one other aspect of the bull historically associated with Phoenicia that the Europa myth may preserve structurally: the Greek root word for bull (tauros) is not originally Greek but Phoenician and its Western Semitic cognate languages where it was seen as t'r until borrowed into Greek. This myth may also be a dim memory of that Western Semitic borrowing as set in Phoenicia.

Rembrandt’s Europa may not have her soggy dress, here trailing in the water, fluttering exactly as Ovid describes but her streaming hair waves behind her instead as an Ovidian allusion. Although there is not much of a trysting place here or pasturage for cows on this shore, the frightened friends or family on the edge of the water remain on “the beach where the king’s daughter had a common playground with her Tyrian girls,” as Ovid relates.

Detail of Kadmos[?] in Cart and Europa's Entourage

This is a locus pregnant with change as well as a transport they cannot follow over water in their cart, or, more important, their skilled wind-guided ships despite their Phoenician seamanship. Europa leaves them behind, while now against her will, but she will soon turn forward and grasp the future. Rembrandt’s fusion of classical and Dutch elements is both consistent with myth while highly individual, balancing the somewhat stormy Jovian (and very Dutch) sky against the watery low horizon. The highlight intensifies Jupiter's identity behind the huge white bull who swims much like he thunders over the waves.

The great East India Company merchant Jacques Specx owned this painting at the end of his life, and Schwartz suggests the subject is a glorifying allegory of Specx’s mercantile interests shipping Asian goods, “enticing the treasures of Asia on to ships bound for Europe,” (8) possibly commissioned while Specx was still in the Asian colony of Batavia overseeing exotic shipping and stewarding its profits like a modern Phoenician merchant prince.

In conclusion, Rembrandt demonstrates his fidelity to Ovid and the iconography of Europa in this myth history painting, perhaps proudly wanting his clients to know he too had studied Latin and the Classics at the Leiden Grammar School, much like the gentlemen burghers of Amsterdam to whom he felt at least equal in every way save one, the wealth that usually eluded him and which he often pursued to his eventual downfall, like the tantalizing bull that Europa finds will seduce her.

Note: This essay is excerpted from Patrick Hunt's book REMBRANDT, released in November, 2006, Ariel Books, New York.

(1) Patrick Hunt. "Ekphrasis: Rembrandt and Ovid, The Abduction of Europa (1632: Metamorphoses II.849-59, and the Myth Tradition". Ex Libris: Journal of the Associates of the Stanford University Libraries, vol. 14, October, 2006, 18-21.

(2) H. J. Rose. A Handboook of Greek Mythology. London: Methuen-Routledge (1929) 1991 repr., 183.

(3) Herodotus IV.147; Diodorus Siculus V.59.2 & ff; Pausanias V.25.12; Andrew Robinson. The Story of Writing. Thames and Hudson, 1995, 166 ff.

(4) Amy Golahny. "Rembrandt's 'Europa', in and out of pictorial and textual tradition," in L. Freedman and G. Huber-Rebenich, eds. Wege zum Mythos, Berlin, 2001, 39-55.

(5) Paul Joannides. Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, 77 .

(6) Mariët Westermann. Rembrandt. London: Phaidon, 2000, 118.

(7) Mollie Holtman. Handbook to the Collections. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. 1997, 118.

(8) Gary Schwartz. Rembrandt, his life, his paintings. New York: Viking, 1985.

Rembrandt's painting © 2005 The J. Paul Getty Trust. All rights reserved.

Stanford University

http://www.patrickhunt.net
phunt@stanford.edu

copyright © 2005 Patrick Hunt