Saturn Devouring His Son (Rubens)

The old god Saturn, wild-haired and desperate, sinks his teeth into the body of his own infant son, devouring his children to forestall the prophecy that one will overthrow him. Rubens paints the myth with unflinching horror - the child's small limbs, the father's gaunt, frightened face, the cold star of Saturn overhead. Now in the Prado, the picture is a study in fear curdled into cruelty, the ancient terror of being supplanted made flesh. Goya would later take the same subject into far darker territory, but Rubens gives it monstrous, classical weight.