Jupiter Rebuked by Venus

Abraham Janssens, Peter Paul Rubens's major competitor in Antwerp in the 1610s, produced monumental paintings of mythological and secular subjects. Influenced by his five-year stay in Rome, he injected his paintings with recognizable quotations from ancient sculpture and Italian Renaissance painting. This scene of Venus reprimanding the visibly annoyed Jupiter on Mount Olympus is a direct reference to a composition by the Italian artist Raphael on the ceiling of the Villa Farnesina in Rome. Janssens, however, enhanced the power and dynamism of the figures by emphasizing their musculature and working on a larger scale.