Apollo and Coronis

Poelenburgh, together with Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598–1657), was one of the most refined Dutch painters of the first half of the seventeenth century, whose speciality was religious and mythological subjects set in extensive Italianate landscapes. Poelenburgh in particular customarily worked on a small scale, often – as here – on copper, with the result that within the context of his practice the present example is an unusually substantial as well as immaculately preserved production. In 1786, three years before the storming of the Bastille, it was engraved in reverse when it formed part of the legendary collection of the Duc d’Orléans, who was the brother of the ill-fated Louis XVI, and met an equally violent end.
At that time, the subject was identified as the story of Cephalus and Procris from Ovid’s 'Metamorphoses', but the fact that the weapon is an arrow as opposed to a javelin proves that it must actually represent another closely related myth likewise recounted in the 'Metamorphoses', concerning Apollo and Coronis. Just as the hunter Cephalus inadvertently kills his spying wife and immediately rues it, so too the sun god’s impulsive fury at his lover’s infidelity is instantly turned to grief by her death. His reaction is to punish the raven who had told him of her transgression, and turn its hitherto white feathers to black. Poelenburgh has deliberately kept the bloodshed to a minimum (Ovid relates that ‘Her fair white skin was drenched in crimson blood’), and instead allows the eye to revel in the perfection of the lovers’ nude bodies.