The Conquest of Tunis by Charles V (1535)

In the summer of 1535 Emperor Charles V sailed with a fleet against Tunis, which the Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa had seized the year before, and he commanded the campaign in person. The first target was La Goletta, the fortress guarding the harbour, and it fell in July. Rubens took up the subject about a century later, around 1638, in the last years before his death in 1640, and he never finished the panel. The fortress burns at the upper left. Below it the emperor rides in shining armour, and in front of him, on the white horse, is his commander, the Marquis del Vasto. The Berlin museum points out that you can follow Rubens's method here stage by stage, from a blue-grey glaze over the chalk ground, through thin brown strokes sketching the crowds at the edges, to full colour only at the centre.