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Peter Paul Ruben's Prometheus Bound

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Prometheus Bound, one of Peter Paul Rubens’ most proud creations during his life time as an artist in his change from a Mannerist style to a Baroque style (“Museum Label Text, Prometheus Bound”). The Prometheus Bound is currently located inside the Philadelphia Museum of Arts, taking up an entire wall between two doors with its huge canvas. The painting of Prometheus was painted by Peter Paul Rubens and the painting of the eagle was painted by Frans Snyders. The painting was started c. 1611-1612 and was completed by 1618 using oil paint (“Museum Label Text, Prometheus Bound”). Rubens and Snyders captures the most dramatic moment of the story of Prometheus by using the Baroque style to emphasize the feeling of helplessness in Prometheus to …show more content…

The Baroque style contains the most dramatic moment of a scene with a strong diagonal line that evokes a sensational feeling from the art. In Rubens and Snyders’s Prometheus Bound, colore was used to express the helplessness through the detailed facial expression and body. The facial expression drawn on Prometheus strikes the audience’s emotion by how Rubens used color and texture to lift Prometheus’s eyebrows and stretch his facial expression to express the severe pain and agony. Ruben achieved the effect of Prometheus intensively moving and rejecting the eagle by his use of colore to texturize the muscles on Prometheus’s bare …show more content…

The punishment of betraying Zeus is captured in the painting at the most dramatic moment in Prometheus’s daily suffering of an eagle clawing into his body, ripping out his liver. This painting also conveys the emotional aspect of Prometheus struggling to escape the torture of Zeus. It also contains a diagonal style to emphasize movement to heighten the effects of Baroque artwork, therefore creating the sense of helplessness in the oil painting Prometheus

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