Peter Paul Rubens - The tiger hunt

Title: The tiger hunt
Artist: Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Date: 1618
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 253 x 319 cm

The “Tiger Hunt” is one of four hunting scenes commissioned by Maximilian I of Bavaria in 1615. Rubens painted it after an eight-year stay in Italy (1600-08) where he was very influenced by Baroque masters such as Titian, Tintoretto, and Caravaggio.

The composition of the ”Tiger Hunt” is very dense with horses, different wild animals and men dressed in different styles (conquistador helmets and armors, Ottoman robes and turbans, and Roman togas). The painting draws very probably from Leonardo da Vinci’s never-completed fresco, the “Battle of Anghiari”, which Rubens had made a drawing of. The energy, violence and pain that can be seen in the human and animal faces and bodies in Rubens’ painting are uncharacteristic of paintings of the time.”