Alpheus and Arethusa

Moses van Uyttenbroeck · 1626

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

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.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Alpheus and Arethusa brings together one of Ovid's most lyrical myths — a river god's pursuit of a fleeing nymph — with the delicate, sun-warmed sensibility of the Dutch Golden Age pastoral tradition. Moses van Uyttenbroeck worked in The Hague during the early seventeenth century and became a favoured painter at the court of Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange, who collected his small mythological panels with considerable enthusiasm. His style sits in the lineage of Adam Elsheimer and Cornelis van Poelenburgh — intimate in scale, luminous in tone, figures nestled into softly rendered landscapes rather than dominating them. On panel, his oil technique achieves a jewel-like surface, colours glowing from beneath with a warmth that larger canvases rarely match. Van Uyttenbroeck was among a relatively small group of Dutch painters of his era who specialised almost exclusively in mythological and pastoral subjects drawn from classical literature, making him an unusual figure within a tradition dominated by portraiture and genre scenes. This hand-painted oil reproduction preserves every quality that makes the original compelling: the tender scale, the luminous flesh tones, the way light falls through the landscape as though the world itself is holding its breath. Painted by hand in oils, it carries the same visual weight and warmth as the panel hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago.