Der Triumph der Kirche

In 1625 the Infanta Isabella, who governed the Spanish Netherlands from Brussels, asked Rubens to design a great cycle of tapestries for a convent in Madrid, the Descalzas Reales. The subject was the Eucharist, the Catholic doctrine she wanted proclaimed at a moment when much of northern Europe had turned Protestant. This is one of Rubens's painted designs for that cycle. He staged it like a triumphal procession, the Church carried forward on a chariot while her enemies tumble beneath the wheels. Because weavers reverse an image when they copy it into thread, Rubens had to paint the whole scene backwards, working out the composition in a mirror before the loom ever touched it.