Cephalus and Procris

Godfried Schalcken painted Cephalus and Procris probably in the 1680s, depicting the tragic myth from Ovid in which Cephalus accidentally kills his wife Procris with a magical spear, having mistaken her for an animal in the forest. Schalcken was a pupil of Gerard Dou and the most technically accomplished candlelight painter in 17th-century Dutch painting; his specialty was nocturnal or torch-lit subjects in which he could display his extraordinary ability to render the warm, flickering light of artificial illumination. Mythological subjects allowed Schalcken to deploy his candlelight effects in settings more elevated than the domestic genre scenes that constituted the bulk of Dutch painting, and the Cephalus and Procris narrative—with its intense emotional moment of grief and irreversible loss—provided powerful dramatic content for his atmospheric technique.

Schalcken's handling of artificial light sources is among the most refined in all of Dutch 17th-century painting. The warm, concentrated illumination from a torch or candle models the figures with precision—the flesh of the dying Procris glowing against deep shadow, the grief of Cephalus visible in his expression and posture. The background darkness is absolute, focusing the eye entirely on the illuminated central scene.