The Rape of Europa, early 1650s, Oil on canvas, Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth; image courtesy of The Courtauld Gallery.
Peter Lely is best known as the principal painter to Charles II after Charles was restored to the British throne in 1660; he is remembered as the great depicter of the debauched and glamorous Restoration court. Lely specialized in portraits of courtiers and of the beautiful women at court, including the king’s numerous mistresses. He had come to England, however, from the Netherlands twenty years earlier in 1641. It was the year Van Dyck died, which left a space for an aspiring portrait painter. Lely had a successful career as an artist before and during the English Civil War and at the time of the republican Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, whose iconic “warts and all” portrait he painted. He was always in favor, for he had also painted Charles I with his younger son James, Duke of York (later King James II). The Courtauld exhibition is focused on Lely’s work from this earlier period, on his scenes from the Bible, classical mythology, and Arcadias inspired by the English poets Sydney, Donne, and Milton and Lely’s own friend and admirer, Richard Lovelace.
Lely’s biblical works on display include a rarely painted scene from Genesis, Reuben presenting mandrakes to Leah(ca. 1640–50). Reuben, Leah’s young son, has found the mandrakes, a fertility-inducing plant, in a field and bears them in his hand to his mother; Rachel, Leah’s sister who has