The Abduction of Europa

Jean François de Troy

National Gallery of Art

A bare-chested, blond woman sits sideways on a muscular, large, white bull, who charges into an ocean while three women look on in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or peachy skin and rosy cheeks. The bull is being pulled to our left by a winged, nude, baby-like putto wading into the water. The putto has pudgy arms, a round tummy, and short, blond, curly hair. He looks back over his shoulder and smiles as he reaches along a garland of leaves and flowers, used to pull the bull. The bull turns his head to look over our left shoulder with bright, golden eyes. His front legs plunge into the azure-blue water. Rings of flowers encircle his short, steel-gray horns. The woman riding atop, Europa, leans across the bull’s neck and one hand clutches one of the bull’s horns. She looks and gestures with her other hand to the group behind the bull, to our right. Europa’s blond hair is woven with a deep pink ribbon. Her eyes are slitted as she looks down her nose, her pink lips open. Pale, shimmering yellow fabric covers her legs over sandaled feet. She sits on a rose-pink cloth that also billows up behind her. She wears two pearl bracelets on her gesturing hand. The three women looking on sit and stand near a tree trunk in a dense wooded area in the lower right quadrant of the painting. Their mouths are open, their hair bound, and they wear flowing robes of bronze orange, royal blue, lavender gray, or pale mint green. One woman has dark brown hair and sits with one elbow propped on a tree root. Her hands are clasped and she wears gold bracelets. Another woman leans across her lap, her arms outstretched toward Europa, her back to us. The third woman stands and leans in behind this pair, also reaching out toward Europa. A deeply shaded rocky ground stretches across the bottom of the canvas, and a leafy tree extends off the top right corner. Dense vegetation becomes lighter and hazier in the distance, to our right. A bright dot of cream white surrounded by coral peach on the ocean’s horizon suggests the sun. In the top half of the picture, towering puffy clouds rise against a topaz-blue sky.