The Four Continents, also known as The Four Rivers of Paradise or The Four Corners of the World, is a painting by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, made between 1612 and 1615.

[5] Around this time, Rubens was creating numerous sketches of exotic animals such as lions, crocodiles, tigers, and hippopotamuses.

Rubens had a preference for depicting full-bodied forms representing the strength humanist ideals passed on from Greco-Roman influenced Renaissance.

A modern day interpretation, based on critical theory methods, reads feminist and racial meaning in this piece sometimes using Rubens own words in describing his preference for representing particularly women who were, as he put it, "white as snow.

While a large part of her body is covered, her upper torso is still visible and shows the same endowed form Rubens has given to the other figures.

She sits central in the geometry which may indicate the fascination Baroque artists had with Africa and the Nile because of its mysterious almost mystical source.

[7] The river god is partially concealing the woman and this could allude to the unknown origin of the Nile in Rubens time.

By having his arm firmly around her waist and with a majority of her body being covered, Africa could be representing this unknown source of the Nile.

[7] The art historian Elizabeth McGrath proposed a different interpretation of the female figures on the painting, believing them to be water nymphs representing the sources of the rivers instead.

[9] The Arts and Culture news outlet from the University of Exeter poses that this painting could represent the spread of Catholicism around the world.

In The Image of the Black in Western Art, the author Jean Michel Massing proposes two alternative rivers in place of the Danube and Rio de la Plata.

[10] To restorationists, this hinted at the idea of the piece once being smaller than it currently is and the additional canvas was used to help the painting fill out the frame.