The Abduction of Europa

1654–56

David Teniers the Younger (Flemish, 1610–1690)
After Titian (Italian, c. 1488–1576)

The Rape of Europa and Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac are among the more than 200 lively, small-scale copies by David Teniers the Younger recording the superb art collection of his patron, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, ruler of the Spanish Netherlands. They were created as models for the engraved illustrations in a catalogue of the archduke’s collection, which was printed and made available for purchase by the public as the Theatrum Pictorium (Theater of painting) in 1660. A prolific painter of peasant subjects and other everyday scenes, Teniers also served as the archduke’s curator.

Status: On View, Gallery 208
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: David Teniers the Younger
Title: The Abduction of Europa
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1654–1656
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 21.3 × 31.5 cm (8 3/8 × 12 3/8 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Charles L. Hutchinson
Reference Number: 1936.124
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/111647/manifest.json

George Scharf, Catalogue Raisonné; or, A List of the Pictures in the Private Apartments of Blenheim Palace; with Occasional Remarks and Illustrative Notes (London, 1862), vol. II, p. 154, no. 32.
Charles Davis, A Collection of One Hundred and Twenty Paintings by David Teniers (From Blenheim Palace): The Property of His Grace the Duke of Marlborough. On Exhibition at Mr. Davis’s Galleries (London, 1884), p. 15, no. 32.
Philip Hendy, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Catalogue of the Exhibited Paintings and Drawings (Boston, 1931), p. 375.
Art Institute of Chicago, Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago: Report for the Year Nineteen Hundred Thirty-Six (Chicago, 1937), p. 40.
George Vertue, “Notebooks,” The Volume of the Walpole Society 26 (1937-1938), p. 135.
William Suida, “Forgotten Splendor in Titian’s Treasury,” Art in America 29 (1941), pp. 9, ill., 12-13.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 445.
Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian: Complete Edition, vol. III (London, 1975), p. 174.
Barbara Mundt, “Große Bild-Erfindungen: Beispiele künstlerischer Interpretation des Europa-Themas in der Malerei des 16. Und 17. Jahrhunderts,“ in Die Verführung der Europa, ed. Barbara Mundt (Franfurt-am-Main, 1988), pp. 120-121, ill., 284-285.
Jacques Foucart, “Quelques exemples de représentations de l’enlèvement d’Europe chez les maîtres nordiques au XVIIe eiècle,” in D’Europe à l’Europe, vol. I, Le mythe d’Europe dans l’art et la culture de l’antiquité au XVIIIe siècle, eds. Rémy Poignault and Odile Wattel-de Croizant (Tours, 1998), p. 250.
Peter H. Gommers, Europe – What’s in a Name (Leuven, 2001), p. 115, ill.
Margret Klinge, “David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting,” in David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting, ed. Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen (London, 2006), pp. 25-26, 28.
James Methuen-Campbell, “Early Collections of Teniers’s Copies for the Theatrum Pictorium,” in David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting, ed. Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen (London, 2006), pp. 59-63.
Celia Hilliard, “‘The Prime Mover’: Charles L. Hutchinson and the Making of the Art Institute of Chicago,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 36,1 (2010), p. 30.

Art Institute of Chicago, Recent Accessions to the Permanent Collections of the Art Institute, December 22 – January 24, 1937, no cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, Summer Exhibitions: Paintings from the Permanent Collections, July 20 – October 29, 1939, no. 6.
Florence, Italy, Galleria degli Uffizi, Il Mito di Europa: da fanciulla rapita a continente, June 11, 2002 – January 6, 2003, no. 25.
Chicago, Smart Museum of Art, The Painted Text: Picturing Narrative in European Art, April 1 – September 14, 2003, no cat.

Presumably John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, died 1722 [it is presumed that he was the purchaser of the Blenheim set of 120 copies made by Teniers as models for engravings forming part of a larger group of small copies after paintings in the collection of Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm]; his daughter, Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, certainly by 1728, when the copies were seen by Pierre Jacques Fougeroux [see Methuen-Campbell, 2006, p. 61]; by descent in the collection of the dukes of Marlborough to George Charles Spencer-Churchill, 8th Duke of Marlborough, sold, Christie’s, London, July 26, 1886, no. 107 to Thomas Agnew & Sons for £27.6s [according to annotated catalogue at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorisch Documentatie, The Hague]; sold by Agnew’s to Charles Hutchinson, Chicago, September 24, 1886, died October 7, 1924 [copy of receipt in curatorial file]; his widow Frances Kinsley Hutchinson, died 1936; bequeathed to the Art Institute in 1936.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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