The Dancing Peasants,
oil on canvas, 106 x 75 cm, framed

The Dancing Peasants is one of Peter Paul Rubens’s rare genre scenes, most of which date from the master’s late period, when he immersed himself in the artistic tradition of his native Flanders. Rubens adopted the idea of the dancing peasants from Pieter Brueghel the Elder, in whose oeuvre rustic festivities played a special role. The most obvious reference to Brueghel is Rubens’s Kermesse (1635–38, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. 1797), an expansive banquet scene with dozens of drinking, dancing, and flirting peasants. In other works by the master, such as the Feast of Venus (1636/37, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 684), the motif of dance appears in the form of nymphs, satyrs, and erotes, where they, alluding to such ancient writers as Virgil, express an ideal state of pleasure and harmony between man and nature. In the present composition Rubens has uniquely combined Flemish genre painting and ancient mythology: eight sensuously moving couples dance to the tune of a flute in a way that is reminiscent of Flemish peasant feasts. Whereas some figures wear contemporary clothes, others are dressed in costumes in the style of antiquity and can thus be identified as mythological characters. The male figure on the right-hand side wearing a crown of leaves and a snakeskin represents Bacchus, and the male figure further to the left wearing a wreath of ivy seems to be a satyr. The flutist in the treetop can also be seen as belonging to the god of wine’s entourage. Rubens thus presents a bacchanal in the guise of a contemporary genre scene, while simultaneously referring to sexual desire, which finds expression in the postures of the dancers and their semi-nude appearances. We regularly encounter the subject of physical desire in Rubens’s oeuvre, who considered it a fundamental component of life and the origin of fertility. This spring dance, with its bright and shining colours and the fertile Campagna landscape in the background of the scene, must be understood in this sense.

The composition of the Dancing Peasants was conceived during the painter’s final years, when he had arrived at the acme of his fame. Rubens responds to the bold rhythm of his composition, which is emphasised by the two jumping dogs, with a comparatively loose manner of painting. By the time this painting was made, Rubens had visited Spain twice and studied works by Titian in the royal collections, by whose art his liberal brushwork was inspired. Individual figures already appear on a sheet of studies in the British Museum (London, inv. 1885,0509.50, circa 1630) that can primarily be associated with the Paris Kermesse. The first version of this composition was still kept in Rubens’s studio at the time of his death in 1640, which proves that it had not been made in the context of a commission, but rather out of the master’s personal interest in the subject. As early as 1640 it was referred to as ‘Dance of Italian Peasants’ in the inventory of Rubens’s studio, and King Philip IV acquired it from the artist’s estate for his summer apartment at the Alcázar (today Madrid, Prado, inv. P001691). The workshop replicas painted during Rubens’s lifetime demonstrate the artistic importance that the master himself attached to this composition; they served as models for copper engravings produced in Flanders (Leo van Heil, 1605 – circa 1664, and Schelte a Bolswert, 1586–1659), thanks to which the Dancing Peasants also became popular in Rubens’s native country.