'Nothing was more characteristic of Rubens than his choice of subjects from the mythology of the Greeks and the works of the ancient poets; and in nothing did he display more freedom, originality, and poetry.' Among his most famous mythological pictures is the 'Battle of the Amazons,' now at Munich. 'The women are driven back by the Greeks over the river Thermodon; two horses are in savage combat on the bridge; one Amazon is torn from her horse; a second is dragged along by a sable steed, and falling headlong into the river, where others are swimming and struggling. No other battle-piece, save that of the Amazons, can compare with Raphael's "Battle of Constantine."'
Another great picture is The 'Carrying off of Proserpine.' 'Pluto in his car is driven by fiery brown steeds, and is bearing away the goddess, resisting and struggling. The picture absolutely glows with genial fire. The forms in it are more slender than is general with Rubens. Among the companions of Proserpine the figure of Diana is conspicuous for grace and beauty. The victorious god of love hovers before the chariot, and the blue ocean, warmly tinted with the sunbeams, forms a splendid back-ground.'[23]
Rubens was famous for the loveliness and grace of his paintings of children. Perhaps the most beautiful is that of 'The Infant Jesus and John playing with a Lamb.'
Rubens was a great animal painter. One of his celebrated animal pictures is 'Daniel in the Lions' Den,' now at Hamilton Palace, in which each lion is a king of beasts checked in his fiercest have been painted by Rubens in a fit of pique at a false report which had been circulated that he could not paint animals, and that those in his pictures were supplied by the animal-painter, his friend and scholar, Schneyders.
Rubens' landscapes are not the least renowned of his pictures. He gave to his own rich but prosaic Flanders, all the breadth and breeziness and matchless aerial effects of a master of painting, and a true lover of nature under every aspect, who can indeed distinguish, under the most ordinary aspect, those hidden treasures which all but a lover and a man of genius would pass by. His 'Prairie of Laacken,' 'with the sun of Flanders piercing the dense yellow clouds with the force of fire,' is of great repute.