The Death of the Consul Decius

On 9 November 1616 an art dealer, a Brussels weaver and a Genoese merchant signed a contract in Antwerp for two sets of tapestries, with Rubens to supply the designs. He had never worked for weavers before. The subject was out of the way even then. Publius Decius Mus was a Roman consul who, after omens in a dream, rode into the Latin line to buy his army its victory with his own death, the way Livy tells it. This panel is the moment he comes off the horse. It reached the Prado in 1889 with the bequest of the Duchess of Pastrana, and the museum now reads two hands in it. Most of the painting belongs to someone else in the workshop, while the winged Victory sweeping in at the top is Rubens's own, added when the panel was already finished.