Ansegisus and St. Bega

Around 1612 to 1615 Rubens appears to have planned a series on the dukes of Brabant, a line of rulers running from a half-legendary past down to his own day, and this panel is thought to belong to that project, which was never carried out. The couple come from the late 7th century, the Frankish world of the Merovingian kings. Ansegisel was a nobleman at the Austrasian court, and his wife Begga, after his death, founded a convent at Andenne on the Meuse and was later honoured as a saint. Their son, Pippin of Herstal, was the great-grandfather of Charlemagne, which is exactly why such a pair was worth painting for a ruling house that wanted an ancient ancestry behind it. The panel travelled a long way afterwards. It was in the Buckingham collection in England by 1635, in the imperial collection in Prague by 1685, and in Vienna from 1721.