Originally he had only planned a stormy landscape. Rubens then expanded the composition and added human and divine figures. This fits in well with the Flemish tradition, which, in contrast to the Dutch, almost always enriched landscapes. Four figures appear on a forest path: two older people, strutted on walking sticks and accompanied by two gods; they have escaped the storm that is still raging.
Philemon and Baucis is a story from Roman antiquity in which the gods reward hospitality.
In gratitude for the welcome, which the rest of the village did not offer, the gods take their hosts to the hill. Then the whole village, except for the hut of Philemon and Baucis, is flooded by a deluge.
The gods ask them to have a wish that they can fulfill as thanks for the hospitality. Philemon and Baucis wish nothing more than to worship the two gods for the rest of their lives. The hut suddenly turns into a large temple.
The forces of nature are shown: helplessly an ox lies trapped in a broken tree above the flood; at the rainbow, the bodies of a mother and her child are washed ashore; above them a man who is lucky enough to have escaped clings to a tree.
Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 28 June 1577 - Antwerp, Belgium, 30 May 1640) was a South Dutch painter of Flemish Baroque.
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