Shepherd Scene (corydon And Sylvia) After Peter Paul Rubens

Shepherd Scene (Corydon and Sylvia) after Pierre-Paul Rubens
Probably late 17th century
Oil on canvas
71 x 86 cm
Relined and with old restorations from the 19th century

A historic copy, probably late 17th century, of the celebrated painting by Rubens in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, known as the Shepherd Scene or Corydon and Sylvia.  This is an unpublished copy and it is not listed in the recent book dedicated to Rubens' genre scenes by Nils Buttner (Nils Büttner, Genre Scenes, Corpus Rubenianum, vol. XVII, 2020).

The original painting in Munich was enlarged in stages by Rubens himself, and in this way was transformed from a horizontal composition into a vertical one. Therefore our copy might possibly reproduce the original format of the painting in Munich. As the definitive finished version was in a vertical format, copies in a horizontal format with the shepherd and shepherdess in half-figure are very rare, and for this reason our copy could be the painting documented in the Pasquier collection in Rouen in 1753 by Jean-Baptiste Descamps: 'Chez M. Paquier, Député du Commerce pour la Ville de Rouen, six Tableaux de Rubens, Rémus & Romulus, Orphée & Uridice, Persée & Andromède, un homme & une femme representés à demi-corps, de un autre en forme de Portrait' (Jean-Baptiste Descamps, Vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois (1753) p. 316