The baptism of Christ

Rubens painted this in Italy, not in Flanders. In his twenties he had left Antwerp to work as court painter to the Duke of Mantua, and around 1604 he was handed his first really large commission there, three canvases for a Jesuit church in the city. This is one of them, John the Baptist pouring the water of the Jordan over Christ. The bodies are heavy and muscular because Rubens had been drawing after Michelangelo and the antique statues he studied in Rome, and you can feel him trying out everything he had learned. It stretches more than 4 metres across. Years later, back home in Antwerp, he became famous across Europe. The picture travelled a long way round and now hangs in Antwerp, the city he had once left to paint it.