“Daniel in the Lions’ Den” by Peter Paul Rubens (A Close Look at this Painting)

An ARTWORK by Peter Paul Rubens
In this article ARTSandFOOD® is closely looking at the painting “Daniel in the Lions’ Den” in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.C.

(From time to time it is a pleasure to invite you to look at a painting with me. Like most museum visitors, I walk by the majority of the artworks giving the minimal 2.5 second glance at each piece before moving to the next, then a painting catches my interest. For this painting I look very deeply, investigating the surface, the under-painting and the preliminary drawing, the brush strokes or lack of brush strokes and the smaller paintings within the overall painting, checking out every square inch of that painting. I can spend 10 or even 20 minutes taking in the details of a painting I find interesting.)

Sir Peter Paul Rubens Self-portrait, 1623, National Gallery of Australia

Here we will take a close look at the large painting “Daniel in the Lions’ Den” by the Flemish artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens. The artist’s title for this work was “Daniel amidst many lions”
(Painting size: 7′ 4.25″ by 10′ 10″. “Flemish” refers to Flanders which was a country made up of the NW part of what is now Belgium, plus some of SW Netherlands and some of Northern France.)

Rubens is most widely known for his portrayal of female beauty as fleshy and robust. The world has even adopted the term “Rubenesque” when referring to this type of female figure.

Daniel in the Lions’ Den is a theological subject. According to the Old Testament, Daniel was purposely and falsely accused then thrown into a lions’ den for not worshiping the Persian King, Darius. The unwilling king could not go against his own decree and said to Daniel: “May your God… rescue you!” The next morning and after the entire night of being locked-in with hungry lions, King Darius found Daniel safe and unharmed, without a scratch on him. Believing in Divine judgement, the king, removed Daniel from the den and the men who were his accusers where thrown in and quickly dispatched by the lions. Daniel is pictured in this painting as he prays, thanking God for his deliverance, after the stone over the entrance above him has been removed.

If there is a visual prize in this painting, it is Peter Paul Rubens’ fascination with the lions he often visited at the Royal Menagerie in Brussels – sketching and painting them from life and his personal observations and experience. Let’s look closely at the personalities and postures of Rubens’ lions and a detail of Daniel, the human focus of the painting, in a perilous circumstance.

This lion appears to be the dominant male of the pride, relaxed except for his face, which is aggressive and in-charge saying, “Don’t Mess with Me!”

The male, on the left, appears to be considering Daniel as breakfast, while the female, on the right, seems intent on making certain that does not happen.

The lioness shown from the back side, on the lower right of the painting, was not drawn from life, but Rubens used a small Paduan bronze statuette as the model. This lioness also seems to be trying to keep the more agitated male away from Daniel.

Many of the lions in the painting appear sleepy or asleep.

A lion sleeping in the background.

This skull deserves a closer look and may hold Rubens’ hypothesis about how Daniel survived the night. There appears to be a glowing ember inside the eye socket of the skull, with heat and fumes emanating from the crack in the left temple. Question: “Were the lions sedated and put to sleep by a miraculous smoky haze?

The human bones in the lions’ den tell of lives lost.

This portait of a sleeping lion shows Rubens close observation of these animals from life.

Daniel is thanking God for keeping him safe through a frightful night surrounded by lions and by human remains from souls who were not so blessed. The lion in the foreground is the only animal in the painting with a look of immanent and dangerous intent on its face. The lion bearing his teeth, near Daniel’s head, could be roaring but more likely it is yawning and stretching after waking up. Daniel’s face is tilted back and up. This is a very difficult angle for an artist to paint a realistic face, but Rubens is masterful at the foreshortening. Daniel’s whole body is tense down to his toes and his fingers are intertwined in a tight grip of praying hands. Painting intertwined fingers is another technically difficult feat for an artist. Look closely and see how confusing iintertwined fingers visually appear.

Lions have long been considered the king of beasts, regal and powerful throughout European history. Rubens captures a sense of that power and romance in this face.

(Sources: photographic images were taken by ARTS&FOOD® staff with permission of the museum, using the original painting as the reference. The text came from notes taken at the museum and facts gleaned from the guidebook “Master Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art”, and from Wikipedia.)