The Eurasian wolf has been subject to a general campaign of extermination across much of Europe since the Middle Ages. The last in England was killed by the end of the fifteenth century, in Scotland in 1684, Denmark in 1772, and Norway in 1973. This hasn’t deterred artists from reminding Europeans of their sinister reputation.

Early in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he tells of Lycaon, who was transformed into a wolf by Jupiter as punishment for cheating him.

Jan Cossiers’ impressive Jupiter and Lycaon from about 1640 shows Jupiter’s eagle vomiting thunderbolts at Lycaon, who is hurrying away as he is being transformed into a wolf, becoming the prototype for the werewolf of the future (see below).

Wolves got a better press in the popular account of the origins of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. Numitor’s daughter, a Vestal Virgin, was discovered to be pregnant. Although that would by tradition have led to her death, Amulius’ daughter interceded, and she was merely kept in solitary confinement. She gave birth to twin boys, who were superhuman in their size and beauty. Amulius ordered one of his servants to take the twins away and drown them in the river, but they were put first into a trough that functioned as a boat. As a result they were washed ashore downstream still alive. A she-wolf then fed the babies, and a woodpecker watched over them; both were later considered to be sacred to the god Mars.

One of the frescoes in the Palazzo Magnani, probably painted by Ludovico Carracci and/or Annibale Carracci, shows the She-Wolf Suckling Romulus and Remus (1589-92). The twins are still inside the trough in which they had survived their trip down the river, and on the opposite bank a woodpecker is keeping a close watch.

Peter Paul Rubens shows Romulus and Remus being discovered by Faustulus, in his painting of 1615-16. Not only is the she-wolf taking care of the twins, but a family of woodpeckers are bringing worms and grubs to feed them, and there are empty shells and a little crab on the small beach as additional tasty tidbits.

Despite that, the wolf had a fearsome reputation in Europe, no doubt amplified by those who sought its extinction.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s The Good Shepherd from 1616 shows a shepherd being attacked by a wolf, as he tries to save his flock, which are running in panic into the nearby wood.

Christian associations can be more positive, particularly in the legend of Saint Francis of Assisi and the wolf of Agubbio, or Gubbio, a small mediaeval town in the Apennine Mountains in central Italy. The saint did a deal with the wolf, where the animal would stop terrorising the town, in return for its people providing it with food.

Luc-Olivier Merson’s marvellous painting of The Wolf of Agubbio from 1877 is set in the town’s central piazza, where it’s a cold winter’s day, so cold that the waters of its grand fountain are frozen as they cascade over its stonework. As the townspeople go about their business, there’s the large wolf of its title with a prominent halo, standing at the door of the butcher’s shop. Leaning out from that door, the butcher is handing a piece of meat to the wolf, as shown in the detail below.

A wolf may also appear in association with the Christian virtue of charity, as depicted by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

His Charity from 1887 is a personification of one of the seven Christian virtues set in timeless classical terms. She is the mother of twins, one of whom she holds by her breast. She is clasping the back of the neck of a dark wolf, lying beside her, adding an unusual touch. This had apparently become a popular motif, and only nine years previously had been painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau in contrasting Academic style.

A wolf is one of the three fearsome animals to threaten Dante in the opening of his Divine Comedy. Camille Corot’s painting of Dante and Virgil from 1859 shows Dante as he started to walk up a hill, only to find his way blocked first by a leopard, then by a lion, and finally by a wolf.

Wolves have made their way into other legends and fables.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s undated The Wolf and the Lamb tells a popular story (Perry 155, La Fontaine I.10) in which a wolf tries to justify killing a lamb on the strength of its criminal record. The lamb proves each crime claimed by the wolf to have been impossible, so the wolf says that the offences must have been committed by someone else in the lamb’s family, therefore it can proceed to kill the lamb anyway.

Gustave Moreau revisited Aesop’s fables late in his career. The Wolf and the Lamb of 1889 is, I believe, a monochrome image of a painting made in full colour, whose wolf looks more threatening than Oudry’s.

Mediaeval folk mythology developed stories of humans turning into wolves, although these were temporary transformations associated with cannibalistic episodes. They became progressively refined and popularised into the Gothic ‘horror’ stories of werewolves feeding on human blood, although those didn’t reach painting until the twentieth century.

Stuart Pearson Wright’s magnificent Woman Surprised by a Werewolf (2008) was inspired by the movie An American Werewolf in London (1981), itself a further transformation of werewolf stories into comedy horror form. The artist intended “to explore that uncharted place where the mystery and sublime of the romantic landscape meets the high camp and melodrama of Hammer horror”, which has come a long way from Ovid’s original story of lycanthropy.

Finally, wolves can sometimes be depicted as hunting quarry.

Peter Paul Rubens’ Wolf and Fox Hunt from about 1616 is one of his brilliant series of hunting scenes, here featuring two large wolves.

The good news is that, since the 1950s, populations of wolves in Europe have been recovering, and with the exception of the British Isles, they’re gradually re-establishing themselves in those countries that had previously hunted them to death.