Act of Devotion by Rudolf I of Habsburg

The Habsburgs told this story about themselves. Rudolf, a count out hunting, meets a priest on foot carrying communion to a dying man, gets down, gives the priest his horse and walks it through the mud himself. In 1273 the same Rudolf was elected king of the Romans, and the family read the crown as payment for that courtesy. Rubens painted the scene in the mid 1620s for the Spanish branch of the house, which built its public image on exactly this kind of devotion. He handled the figures and the horses. The wooded landscape that takes up most of the picture was painted by Jan Wildens, a specialist who often worked with him in Antwerp. By 1636 the canvas was hanging in the Alcázar in Madrid, in the room where the king slept.