A couple of pictures from the Chicago Art Institute.
Abraham Janssens
Flemish, c. 1575–1632
Jupiter Rebuked by Venus, 1612/13
Oil on canvas
In this painting. Venus clasps the hand of her son, Cupid,
and lectures a scowling Jupiter, while the rest of the ancient
gods crowd together on the clouds of Olympus. The reason
for this domestic squabble is unclear, but it may relate to
an episode of the Trojan War. Abraham Janssens was the
first artist to introduce Caravaggio’s dramatic light into
Flemish painting, combining it with the bold classical forms
and striking patterns and colors of northern Mannerism.
Janssens and Peter Paul Rubens were rivals in the produc-
tice of large-scale history paintings like this one in the years
after Rubens returned to Antwerp from Italy in 1608.
Jan Sanders van Hemessen
Netherlandish, active about 1519-56
Judith
About 1540
Oil on panel
For saving the Jewish people from the armies of the Assyrian
general Holofernes, the biblical heroine Judith was viewed
as a model of civic virtue in the Renaissance. The beautiful
widow cut off the head of the drunken and besotted general
after willingly entering his camp. Jan van Hemessen’s inter-
pretation of Judith as a powerful nude stresses her courage
and also reflects contemporary ambivalence toward the
seductive wiles she used against Holofernes; the dangerous
power of women was a recurrent and ironic theme in the
art of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance in northern
Europe.