Meeting of King Ferdinand and Cardinal-infante Ferdinand at Nördlingen

This enormous canvas, over three metres high and almost four wide, was made to stand in the street. In April 1635 the new governor of the Spanish Netherlands, the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, brother of King Philip IV of Spain, made his ceremonial entry into Antwerp, and the city hired Rubens to design the triumphal arches and stages along his route. Most of the paintings for them were carried out by other artists from Rubens's sketches, but some of the largest, this one included, he painted himself. It shows the two Ferdinands, cousins, meeting before the Battle of Nördlingen in September 1634, where the Spanish and imperial armies routed the Swedes and the German Protestant princes. The man greeting the cardinal-infante is Ferdinand, King of Hungary, the future Emperor Ferdinand III. After the festivities the canvas passed through private hands, and in 1701 the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm gave it to Emperor Leopold I.