Der heilige Franziskus empfängt das Christkind von Maria

In 1617 Lille was not in France. It belonged to the Spanish Netherlands, a stronghold of the Catholic Reformation, and the Capuchin friars there had lately enlarged their chapel and were ordering pictures for it from Antwerp, about 110 kilometres up the road. Rubens supplied three canvases for their church, this one in the middle with a Saint Francis in ecstasy and a Saint Bonaventure at its sides, and a Descent from the Cross for the chapel itself. The canvas is well over two metres tall and was painted to be looked up at. Louis XIV took the town in 1667 and the pictures stayed where they were. They were confiscated from the convents during the Revolution, and that seizure is how the Lille museum came by its founding collection.