Presentation in the Temple (right panel of tripych)

This is the right wing of the great triptych Rubens painted for Antwerp Cathedral, and it shows the old man Simeon cradling the infant Christ brought to the temple. The guild that paid for the work, the arquebusiers, the city's gunmen, had Saint Christopher as their patron, the giant who by legend carried the Christ child across a river. Rubens ran that single idea through the whole altarpiece. Each of the front scenes shows Christ being carried, here in Simeon's aged arms, on the central panel in the hands of the men lowering his body from the cross. He made it around 1611, soon after eight years of study in Italy, while Antwerp's churches were being refurnished after decades of religious war. Simeon tilts his face down toward the child he has waited his whole life to hold.