Guido Reni's Abduction of Helen. The Politics and Rhetoric of Painting in Seventeenth-Century Europe

This study explores how Guido Reni's Abduction of Helen functioned as an instrument of political rhetoric in the context of diplomatic relations among Spain, France and the Holy See during the Thirty Years War. The painting was commissioned amidst diplomatic negotiations between the Spanish monarchy and the papacy of Pope Urban VIII. The papacy, the author argues, sought to control the artist's interpretation of his subject--the famous event that caused the Trojan War--by transforming it into a political metaphor alluding to the war between France and the Habsburgs.

'... an enjoyable, yet challenging, examination into the historical, political and literary context of one particular work which stands as an exemplum of a particular genre of seventeenth-century painting.' The Art Book