The Descent from the Cross

Rubens was commissioned to paint this in September 1611 for the cathedral in Antwerp, where the central panel still hangs today. It is the heart of a triptych, and the body of Christ slides down along a white winding sheet into a ring of straining figures. The men who paid for it were the guild of arquebusiers, the city's musketeers, whose patron was Saint Christopher, the carrier of Christ. Rubens answered that with a whole altar built around the idea of carrying the Lord's body. This painting has travelled against its will more than once. French troops took it to the Louvre in 1794, it came home in 1815, and the German army carried it off to Berlin in 1914 before it returned again.