Jupiter Rebuked by Venus

Abraham Janssens · c. 1612

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

197.5 × 237.5 cm (77 3/4 × 93 1/2 in.); Framed: 231.1 × 271.8 × 7.6 cm (91 × 107 × 3 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Mannerism

Jupiter Rebuked by Venus is a commanding mythological tableau that captures the rare moment of a god held to account, rendered with the full weight of Flemish Baroque ambition. Abraham Janssens was one of the leading figures in early seventeenth-century Antwerp, a painter whose time in Rome left a lasting mark on his approach to the human form. His figures carry the sculptural solidity of the Italian Renaissance, and his handling of flesh — warm, luminous, yet grounded — gives scenes like this one an almost theatrical physicality. Where many of his contemporaries followed Rubens toward fluid dynamism, Janssens held to a more monumental, measured classicism that lends his mythological works a distinctive gravity. Janssens was considered Rubens' chief rival in Antwerp during the first decade of the seventeenth century, a reputation supported by the scale and confidence of works like this one, now held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. A hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas honours the deliberate weight of the original — the layered glazes, the careful modelling of form against shadow — bringing a painting that has spent centuries in museum storage into a space where it can finally be lived with.