Prometheus Chained by Vulcan

Entry

Rubens’s famous painting of the Prometheus myth in Sir Dudley Carleton’s collection in The Hague between 1618 and 1625 was a likely inspiration for Van Baburen’s depiction (fig. a).⁸ As in Rubens’s painting, Van Baburen’s Prometheus is a heroic nude shown in dramatic foreshortening, and the extreme ‘Baroque’ violence in both works is equal. However, the dramatis personae, action and setting in the present picture are very different from Rubens’s painting, the iconography of which is straightforward. It follows the earliest account of the myth, that of the ancient Greek writer Hesiod, in which Jupiter punishes Prometheus for giving mankind the use of fire by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus mountains. There, an eagle daily pecks out his everregenerating liver.⁹

Some scholarly interpretations of the Rijksmuseum painting have used either a hypothetical commission or contemporary cultural events to explain Van Baburen’s more elaborate iconography, often isolating one element in the painting as the clavis interpretandi.¹⁰ The unusual elements in Van Baburen’s painting can perhaps be better explained with reference to the classical versions of the myth that the artist or his adviser could have consulted, especially those of two later ancient Greek writers, Aeschylus and Lucian of Samosata. The only two classical sources to include both Vulcan, shown chaining Prometheus in Van Baburen’s painting, and Mercury, who observes the scene with evident glee, are Aeschylus’ play Prometheus Bound and a satirical dialogue by Lucian. It is only in the latter work that both figures appear together at the same time. Lucian’s dialogue is a spoof of the highly serious versions of the myth written by earlier classical writers, using what his modern biographer, Robinson has called the ‘burlesque potential of humanizing the gods’.¹¹ Lucian’s Prometheus, who tries to evade punishment with sophistic arguments and pathetic pleading, is quite the opposite of the dignified Prometheus in Aeschylus’ play, where he steadfastly remains silent. Van Baburen’s portrayal of Prometheus as a howling, red-nosed oaf makes a striking contrast with Rubens’s noble figure, and was probably inspired by Lucian’s farce. As in Lucian’s dialogue, Van Baburen’s Mercury laughs impudently at Prometheus’s plight.¹²

While Lucian’s dialogue may well have been Van Baburen’s source for his inclusion of Vulcan and Mercury, and the comic treatment of the scene, other elements in the painting would not have been derived from it. In Lucian’s satire, Prometheus is punished for committing three offences against Jupiter: cheating him into accepting ox bones and fat as a sacrificial offering, creating human beings and stealing fire for them. The painting does not include props alluding to these offences, but rather a still life composed of a protractor, compasses and books in the lower right corner. These paraphernalia are probably a reference to the various types of knowledge – astronomy, mathematics, writing, medicine and much more – that Prometheus gave man in addition to the physical fire in Aeschylus’ version of the myth.¹³

A truly unique element in the present painting is its setting in Hades. Not only is Van Baburen the only artist to use this setting, all of the classical versions of the myth situate Prometheus’ chaining and torture in the Caucasus mountains.¹⁴ The only reference to Hades in the classical sources is made in Aeschylus’ play, towards the end of which Prometheus reveals that he has a secret, which involves the demise of Jupiter. Mercury tries in vain to persuade Prometheus to reveal his secret, and tells him what Jupiter’s punishment will be if he does not: Prometheus (who is chained in the Caucasus during the entire play) will be cast into Tartarus (Hades) and after a long time will return into the light, where the eagle will come to feast on his liver. Although it seems unlikely that this passage would have prompted Van Baburen, or his adviser, to choose Hades as the setting for his painting, it is significant that Natalis Comes, in his widely consulted handbook on mythology, relates that Tartarus is the location of Prometheus’ chaining in Aeschylus’ play.¹⁵

Another possibility is that Van Baburen conflated the Prometheus myth with that of Tityus, another Titan who suffered a very similar punishment, the only differences being that Tityus’ liver was fed upon by a vulture at the mouth of Hades. Two figures, one stretching his arms out, the other tied to a wheel, are visible in the fires of hell in the background of Van Baburen’s painting. Spicer has suggested that the latter figure could be the Titan Ixion, who was eternally tied to a revolving wheel in hell.¹⁶ Ixion, and his punishment in Tartarus, are usually related to Tityus. Similarly, it is tempting to recognize another mythological protagonist related to Tityus in the figure with outstretched arms. Jupiter punished Tantalus in Hades by moving water and food out of his reach whenever he tried to satisfy his thirst and hunger. These two mythological protagonists might have been included not only because of the possible conflation of Prometheus and Tityus; while Prometheus had stolen fire and knowledge from Jupiter, Tantalus stole food from him, and Ixion his wife.

A number of scholars have identified the setting of the present painting as both Hades and Vulcan’s forge.¹⁷ However, none of the classical sources locate Prometheus’ chaining and punishment in Vulcan’s forge, nor is Vulcan’s forge located in Hades. There is, moreover, no indication in the painting itself that that is the setting.

Although Van Baburen’s treatment of the theme shares with Rubens’s painting the extremely foreshortened Prometheus, his protagonist is not a copy of the Flemish artist’s figure. Garas has suggested that Van Baburen closely followed a now lost composition with Tityus by Manfredi.¹⁸ Manfredi’s painting was described by Joachim von Sandrart as representing a foreshortened Tityus chained to the floor of Hades being freed by Hercules. While in the absence of the actual painting by Manfredi it cannot be determined to what degree Van Baburen was influenced by it, Garas’s conclusion that the Rijksmuseum picture must also represent Tityus and not Prometheus can be rejected, as Mercury does not figure in the Tityus myth.¹⁹

Three other sources for the foreshortened figure of Prometheus have been proposed in the literature. According to Slatkes, the figure of both Prometheus and Vulcan show knowledge of a print by Simon Frisius in Pierium Winsemius’s Chronique ofte Historische geschiedenisse van Vrieslant, published one year prior to Van Baburen’s painting.²⁰ However, the similarities with Frisius’s print, which are actually not that great, are probably coincidental. Both Brown and Manuth have proposed Cornelis Cort’s 1566 engraving²¹ after Titian’s painting of Tityus, which had also been used by Rubens, as Van Baburen’s source for Prometheus’ pose.²² While it cannot be denied that these poses are similar, Van Baburen’s Prometheus repeats a pose that the Dutch artist had already employed earlier for the figure of Malchus in his Arrest of Christ, executed around 1615 according to Slatkes.²³ The figures of Malchus and St Peter were in turn derived from Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St Matthew,²⁴ undoubtedly with Caravaggio’s Conversion of St Paul²⁵ in mind when it came to placing the foreshortened figure close to the picture plane.²⁶

Slatkes has argued that Van Baburen’s now lost Adam and Eve (Lamenting the Death of Abel ?), also listed in the 1707 Van den Blooken sale catalogue, formed an iconographic pair with the present painting.²⁷ He further suggested that an Apollo and Marsyas by Van Baburen,²⁸ which was only ‘rediscovered’ after the publication of his monograph, was also part of this iconographic program representing ‘personages who had defied the gods, or in the case of Adam and Eve, God, and were punished for their trespasses’.²⁹ While the Apollo and Marsyas was not listed in the Van den Blooken sale, the composition is much too similar to that of the Prometheus for the two paintings to have been meant as companion pieces.³⁰ The dimensions of the Adam and Eve are not known, making it difficult to judge whether this work was conceived as a pendant to the Prometheus. At any rate, such a combination of a mythological and a biblical theme would have been unique, and Slatkes’s hypothesis is therefore not very likely.

Van Baburen’s Prometheus Chained by Vulcan is a much more elaborate version of the subject than Rubens’s painting now in Philadelphia. The artist or his advisers may have derived the three central figures and the comic tone from Lucian’s satiric dialogue. The still life of protractor, compasses and books may have been suggested by Aeschylus’ play. By situating the scene in Hades, Van Baburen not only departed from the pictorial tradition but from the classical literature treating the story. He may have chosen this setting based on the description in Comes’s 16th-century handbook, or he may have wished to include the figures of Ixion and Tantalus, who suffered similar gruesome punishments for deceiving Jupiter. Although he probably did not derive his figure of Prometheus from the same source as Rubens, as some scholars have claimed, Van Baburen was probably competing with the example of Rubens’s painting with this iconographically more complex telling of the story.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 14.