The Battle of the Amazons, 1618 by Peter Paul Rubens
Canvas Print - 3455-RPP

Even during his time in Italy, Rubens - no doubt influenced by Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari, which must have made an irresistible impression on him - was engaged in depicting stirring battle scenes. It was probably during these years that he created the drawing now in London of fighting Amazons. He developed the same subject some two decades later in the famous Munich painting, in which, despite the spontaneous bustle of battle, a clear order and considered composition emerge.

On a bridge on both banks of the Thermodon River, the battle rages between the Athenians, led by Theseus, and the Amazons, the warlike female tribe from Asia who fought on the side of the Trojans during the Trojan War. The artist, however, depicts not the clash between the two enemy armies, but the moment when the Greeks coming from the left catch the Amazons on the narrow bridge. This results in a baroque rhythm with an irrepressible momentum. The movement in the composition begins at the left edge of the painting with the rider on the splendid white horse - hardly another painter could convey the beauty and fiery temperament of the thoroughbred like Rubens - and below him an Amazon riding a horse struggles through the logs to escape her pursuers. While in the middle of the bridge the group engaged in a furious duel seems to bring some slowness to the composition, on the right the fight descends into "inhuman chaos": at the bottom, an Amazon with a helmet on her head struggles to save her trophy - the severed head of an enemy - from the man attacking her; at the height of the bridge, a crow-horse gallops furiously to the right, dragging its fallen rider after it; below, two Amazons, tumbling their horses into the river waters, describe a whirling circular motion. The artist shows us a fateful drama, a vision unparalleled in its impact.