Mariä Himmelfahrt

By the time Rubens took on this Assumption, he had painted the subject again and again over three decades, and this was his last and largest attempt at it. It was made for the high altar of the Carthusian church in Brussels, a monastery of monks who lived in near-silence, and it was meant to be seen from far below in candlelight. Mary is swept upward in a rush of red and blue while the apostles crowd around her empty tomb, some reaching after her, one shielding his eyes from the light. Rubens was in his final years and running a busy workshop, yet the handling here is confident enough that scholars credit the whole canvas to his own hand.