Old woman and boy with candles

Rubens had spent eight years in Italy, and while there he studied the paintings of Caravaggio, with their harsh single light and deep surrounding dark. Back in Antwerp around 1616 he tried the idea out in this small night piece. An old woman shields a burning candle stump with one hand while a boy leans over her shoulder to light his own from her flame. Her cupped fingers turn the light to a warm red glow that reaches only their two faces and a little of their clothes, letting everything else fall into shadow. It is one of the earliest Caravaggio-style night scenes painted in the Low Countries. Rubens seems less interested in telling a story than in a plain problem, how a single flame moves across an old creased face and a young smooth one.