Kings Clothar and Dagobert dispute with a Herald

The quarrel on this narrow panel is about who may become a monk. In the story Rubens was illustrating, the Roman emperor Mauritius had forbidden his soldiers to enter the Church. His herald pushes a scroll with the edict toward two crowned kings on horseback, Clothar and his son Dagobert, and they hold out their arms to stop him. They were siding with Bavo, the soldier whose reception as a monk fills the centre of the same altarpiece design, made in 1611 or 1612 for the cathedral in Ghent. The horses take over the panel. Dagobert's silvery grey stretches across its whole width with one hoof raised, and beneath it a dog is in danger of being trampled. Rubens painted most of the scene thinly and fast, then laid thicker paint on the armour so that it catches the light.