Saturn by Peter Paul Rubens
Peter Paul Rubens painted Saturn (Saturno devorando a un hijo) in 1636–1638 for the Torre de la Parada, a royal hunting lodge near Madrid decorated for King Philip IV with scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It shows the old god biting into the chest of a screaming infant, with three stars shining above his head. Now in the Museo del Prado, it is the main precedent for Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son, painted almost two centuries later.
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The Torre de la Parada commission
The Torre de la Parada was a small hunting lodge in the royal forest of El Pardo, north-west of Madrid. Around 1636 Philip IV decided to redecorate it, and Rubens, then the most sought-after painter in Europe and long connected to the Spanish crown as an artist and diplomat, received the commission for a vast mythological cycle. Over sixty subjects, mostly taken from Ovid, were planned. Rubens designed them in small oil sketches, and many of the final canvases were executed by Antwerp painters working from those sketches, among them Jacob Jordaens, Cornelis de Vos and Erasmus Quellinus. A smaller number, Saturn among them, were painted by Rubens himself.
The paintings were shipped to Madrid in 1638. The lodge also housed hunting scenes and works by Diego Velázquez, including his Aesop, Menippus and Mars. Rubens died in 1640, so the Torre de la Parada is one of his last great projects. The building was badly damaged during the War of the Spanish Succession in the early eighteenth century, and its paintings were moved to the royal palaces before entering the Prado, which holds most of the surviving canvases and many of the sketches.
What the painting shows
A tall, powerfully built old man, naked except for a drape, strides forward against a cloudy sky. In one hand he holds a long scythe, the attribute that links Saturn to agriculture and the harvest and, later, to Time (see Saturn, the Roman god). With the other he lifts a baby whose body twists in pain, and he bites into its chest. The child screams, its head thrown back towards the viewer. Above the god's head shine three stars.
The painting follows the classical story told by Hesiod and retold by Ovid: Saturn, warned that he would be overthrown by one of his children, devours them as they are born (see Saturn and Cronus). The choice of an infant is faithful to the myth, and the figure of the god combines Michelangelesque musculature with the white beard and wrinkled skin of age.
The three stars: an astronomical detail
The three stars above Saturn are not decorative. In 1610 Galileo, observing the planet Saturn with his small telescope, saw it as a central body flanked by two smaller ones and announced that "the highest planet" was triple. His telescope could not resolve the rings, which were only explained by Christiaan Huygens in 1659 (see the history of Saturn observation and Saturn's rings). Rubens, a learned painter in contact with scholars across Europe, thus represents the planet as the most advanced astronomy of his day described it: a trio of lights. It is one of the earliest echoes of telescopic astronomy in a major painting.
Style
Saturn belongs to Rubens's late manner: fluent, rapid brushwork, warm flesh tones against a cool, stormy sky, and a strong diagonal running from the scythe through the god's body to the child. Violence is not hidden, but it is staged within an ordered composition; the drama comes from the contrast between the god's muscular calm and the infant's convulsion. The picture is a piece of mythological storytelling for a royal setting, meant to be read alongside dozens of other episodes from Ovid.
Rubens and Goya
Goya, First Court Painter to the Spanish kings, knew the royal collections intimately, and it is generally assumed that he knew Rubens's Saturn. His own version, painted around 1819–1823 on a wall of his house, reads like a deliberate inversion.
| Rubens | Goya | |
|---|---|---|
| Date | 1636–1638 | c. 1819–1823 |
| Purpose | Royal commission, public cycle | Private mural, no commission |
| Victim | Living, screaming infant | Headless, adult-sized body |
| Saturn | Muscular, upright, controlled | Gaunt, crouching, wild-eyed |
| Attributes | Scythe, three stars, sky | None, pure black ground |
| Colour | Warm flesh, blue-grey sky | Blacks and ochres, a touch of red |
| Meaning | Episode from Ovid | Open, unexplained |
Rubens shows a god performing his mythological role; Goya shows a creature in the grip of a compulsion. Seen together in the Prado, the two works trace the passage from the Baroque narrative of myth to a modern, psychological image of horror. More on the tradition in Saturn in painting and on Goya's cycle in the Black Paintings.
Visiting
Rubens's Saturn belongs to the Museo del Prado in Madrid, which holds one of the world's largest collections of Rubens. As with any collection, works rotate or travel on loan, so check the Museo del Prado website to confirm it is on view.
FAQ
Who painted the first famous Saturn devouring his son?
Peter Paul Rubens painted his Saturn in 1636–1638 for Philip IV's Torre de la Parada, almost two centuries before Goya. Earlier depictions existed in prints and decorative cycles, but Rubens's is the first great painting of the subject.
Why are there three stars in Rubens's Saturn?
They represent the planet Saturn as Galileo described it in 1610: a central body with two companions. His telescope was too weak to show the rings, which were explained by Huygens in 1659.
Where is Rubens's Saturn?
In the Museo del Prado, Madrid, together with many other works from the Torre de la Parada series and, in the same museum, Goya's version.
What does Saturn hold in Rubens's painting?
A long scythe, his traditional attribute as a god of agriculture and harvest, which also made him the model for the figure of Father Time.
Sources
- Museo del Prado, collection record for Rubens, Saturn
- Svetlana Alpers, The Decoration of the Torre de la Parada, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, part IX, 1971
- Galileo Galilei, letter announcing the "triple" Saturn, 1610; Christiaan Huygens, Systema Saturnium, 1659
- Ovid, Metamorphoses; Hesiod, Theogony, lines 453–506