Summary
This print is one of many etchings executed by Leon Kossoff in response to, and literally in the presence of, oil paintings by old masters; in this case Minerva Protects Pax from Mars (‘Peace and War’), 1629-30, by Peter Rubens (1577-1640), owned by the National Gallery, London. Tate owns five prints by Kossoff after this Rubens painting (Tate P11700-4). The artist’s ability to explore a number of separate responses while making drawings and prints from a single subject is illustrated in these etchings. This print was never published as an edition; Tate owns the second trial proof.
In Rubens’s painting, an allegory of war and peace, Pax (Peace) is a bountiful nude, offering her breast to Plutus, the child god of wealth. At her feet a satyr examines an overflowing horn of plenty. A winged Cupid and the goddess of marriage, Hymen, take the children to the horn of plenty. Two nymphs are approaching on the left; one of them bearing riches; another one dancing to the sound of a tambourine. To the right of Pax, Minerva, goddess of wisdom, is holding back Mars, god of war, and Alecto, the fury of war, from destroying this scene of abundance. Kossoff’s response to this painting is a maelstrom of swirling lines, from which the principle figures emerge… (read more)
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