A snake painting is a picture in which the serpent does a job: tempting, killing, seducing, punishing or healing.
These 12 paintings run from the fifteenth century to the early twentieth and draw on the Bible, Greek myth and history. They range from a Bible scene by the young Anthony van Dyck to a Medusa that Caravaggio painted on a wooden shield.
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How These Were Chosen
Each entry gives its rank in its title, counting down from number 12 to the top spot. A painting made the list only if its snake meets one of two conditions. Either the animal acts in the story, or the picture stops making sense without it. A serpent that is just one more creature in the grass meets neither.
12. Anthony van Dyck, The Brazen Serpent (1618 to 1620)
Snakes have bitten a crowd of Israelites in The Brazen Serpent, and the cure stands among them: a serpent made of bronze, fixed to a pole.
The episode comes from the Book of Numbers, one of the first books of the Bible. It is set during the long march of the Israelites through the desert, led by their prophet Moses.
God sends snakes to punish the people for speaking against him and against Moses. Then he orders Moses to make a serpent of bronze, and anyone who has been bitten and looks at it survives.
Anthony van Dyck made the picture between 1618 and 1620, when he was about twenty. He was then working in Antwerp beside the great Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, and by 1620 he had become his principal assistant.
The young painter was still feeling his way, and a kneeling woman among the figures shows it. Technical examination shows that van Dyck changed his mind on her more than anywhere else, reworking her clothing and her arms.
The master's name is on the canvas too. It carries the signature "P P Rubens Ft," an abbreviation of the Latin for "Rubens made it," but the signature is false.
The forged name followed the picture to the Spanish court. In 1764 the painter Anton Raphael Mengs, who worked for the king, chose it from the collection of Juan Kelly in Madrid for King Charles III, and it entered the royal collection.
By 1794 the royal inventory, the official list of the king's possessions, already gave the canvas to van Dyck. The false name survived anyway: a lithograph, a kind of print, made in the 1830s for King Ferdinand VII still reads "P. P. Rubens lo pintó," Rubens painted it.
At a Glance
Artist: Anthony van Dyck (1599 to 1641)
Painted: 1618 to 1620
Medium: Oil on canvas
Where to see it: Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (P001637)
About This Painting
How big is The Brazen Serpent?
The Brazen Serpent measures 207 by 234 centimeters, about 81.5 by 92 inches.
How did van Dyck prepare the composition?
Infrared reflectography of The Brazen Serpent shows an underdrawing in two techniques. One is a dry medium in straight, rather dusty strokes, and the other is a liquid line laid down with the brush in one uninterrupted stroke.
Why is the bronze serpent linked to Christ?
The Prado reads the bronze serpent as a symbol of salvation that foreshadows the Crucifixion. In the Gospel of John (3:14), Jesus compares himself to the serpent Moses lifted up in the desert.
11. Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Hercules and the Hydra (about 1475)
In Hercules and the Hydra, painted in Florence around 1475, Antonio del Pollaiuolo shows the hero dressed only in a lion skin. He raises a rough wooden club against the Hydra, the serpent with seven heads that terrorized the Greek city of Lerna, and the skin swells behind him like a sail in the wind.
Centuries later, this small picture vanished from Florence during the Second World War and resurfaced on another continent.