Skip to Content Arts of Europe   Dutch, 1606 - 1669 Jupiter and
Antiope Etching with burin and drypoint  5 x 8 inches  The
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston  Museum purchase with funds
provided by the Brown Foundation Accessions Endowment Fund  Arts
of Europe  Seventeenth-century connoisseurs prized Rembrandt's
etchings as much as they did his oil paintings. Jupiter and
Antiope is the most powerfully erotic etching of his late
period. Rembrandt created approximately 290 etchings, many
postcard-size or smaller, depicting landscapes, portraits, and
biblical, mythological, and genre scenes. Jupiter and Antiope is
one of only a handful of his prints illustrating explicitly
sexual content.  According to Roman legend, the god Jupiter was
so entranced by the beauty of the princess Antiope that he
disguised himself as a satyr and took her by force. Here,
Rembrandt illustrates the moment before Jupiter wakes the
princess, who reclines in a highly artificial pose. The satyr
conforms to the conventional appearance of the cre