Portrait of Matthaeus Yrsselius (1541-1629), Abbot of Sint-Michiel's Abbey in Antwerp

This is a portrait with a job to do after its sitter's death. Matthaeus Yrsselius was abbot of St Michael's Abbey in Antwerp, and he had commissioned Rubens to paint a huge Adoration of the Magi for the abbey church. This panel, from about 1624, was made as his memorial tablet. It was meant to hang near his grave, angled so that the painted abbot gazed toward the high altar with his hands folded, taking part forever in the adoration on Rubens's altarpiece across the church. Rubens gives him the white habit shining like mother-of-pearl against a deep lacquer-red ground, with the shadow of his crozier throwing the whole thing into depth. The epitaph that once hung with it is long gone.