Cain Slaying Abel

By 1608 Rubens had just come home to Antwerp after eight years in Italy, and this small oak panel reads almost like a report on what those years taught him. He was barely 30. Cain pins his younger brother to the ground and pulls his arm back to strike, while Abel twists up with his face contorted in terror. The straining, overbuilt bodies come straight out of Italy, from the ancient statues and the Michelangelo figures Rubens had spent those years copying in Rome. Behind them a small fire still smokes on the stone altar, the offering God accepted and the one he refused, which is what set the two brothers against each other in the Book of Genesis.