Oil Sketch for High Altarpiece, St Bavo, Ghent

These three panels were a pitch for a commission that took more than a decade to come through. Around 1611 Charles Maes, Bishop of Ghent, asked Rubens for a new high altarpiece for his cathedral, dedicated to Saint Bavo, the city's patron. The plan was a triptych. In the centre Bavo, a soldier in the legend, gives up his armour and his wealth to be received as a monk, his sisters watch from one wing, and two kings face down an imperial herald on the other. Maes died in 1612 and the project stalled. In 1614 Rubens wrote to Archduke Albert, co-ruler of the Spanish Netherlands, asking for help in securing the work, and this is probably the sketch he meant. When the altarpiece was finally painted, in 1623 and 1624 for a later bishop, Antoon Triest, it was a single painting, and it still hangs in the cathedral.