Crucifixion of Jesus Christ

Rubens had not long been back from Italy when he painted this crucifixion around 1613, working in Antwerp at the height of the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholic church wanted images that hit hard. For centuries the painting itself was lost, known only through old engravings made after it. Then in 2024 a French auctioneer came across it in a private Paris mansion, and after X-ray and pigment analysis the art historian Nils Büttner identified it as Rubens's own hand. It shows Christ alone on the cross against a dark sky, the muscular, heavily worked body that Rubens had built from studying Roman sculpture and the Italian masters. It changed hands again at auction late in 2025.