The Rape of Europa, c.1576/80 Paolo Cagliari Veronese (c.1528-1588)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Paolo Cagliari Veronese also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting The Rape of Europa is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

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The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

Looking at Veronese's "The Rape of Europa," you start to wonder if any painter has ever had more fun with a mythological abduction. Not fun in a trivial sense - rather, the kind that comes from absolute mastery of one's craft meeting the perfect commission at the perfect moment.

The composition reads like expensive music. Each figure occupies space with the assurance of a note perfectly played, creating harmonies in silk and skin. The whole thing pivots around Europa, who sits there in her gold dress (and what a dress - Veronese could make fabric feel like it had just come off the loom in the most expensive shop in Venice) while her attendants fuss over her like backup singers in some celestial chorus.

You've got to love how Veronese handles the supposed drama here. The white bull - Zeus doing his divine stalker routine - has been domesticated into something between a palace pet and a very patient suitor. The painting keeps threatening to turn into a tragedy but stubbornly remains a comedy of manners. Those putti overhead, scattering flowers like confetti at a Renaissance wedding, are clearly in on the joke.

The landscape does some heavy lifting too. Those trees, dark and brooding, should signal menace, but instead they frame the scene like the wings of a theater. The distant water, where we know Europa will eventually end up, barely registers as a threat. It's all handled with the kind of sophisticated nonchalance that only comes from being really, really good at what you do.

When this thing landed in the Sala dell'Anticollegio at the Ducal Palace, it must have seemed like it had finally found its spiritual home - a waiting room for important people that basically functioned as Venice's way of saying "We're rich and cultured, deal with it." The painting fits that brief perfectly. It's a myth transformed into a social occasion, a potential trauma turned into a fashion show, and somehow - this is the real miracle - it all works. Only in Venice, folks. Only in Venice.