Shortly before November 1636, Rubens received the commission from Philip
IV of Spain to supply more than sixty paintings with mythological
subjects for his new hunting lodge, the Torre de la Parada. In about one
and a half years, the enormous task was completed. The pictures had been
painted partly by Rubens himself, partly from his designs by a number of
collaborators, among them Cornelis de Vos, Jacob Jordaens, Theodoor van
Thulden and Erasmus Quellinus. Today, forty of these paintings, more
than fifty of Rubens's brilliant sketches and a few preparatory drawings
survive. Together with three never previously published
eighteenth-century inventories of the Torre de La Parada, they have
provided the material for the new analysis of the series.