The education of Mary

Just before he painted this, Rubens had spent nearly two years away from his easel, sent between the courts of Madrid and London to help end the war between Spain and England. Both kings knighted him for the work. Then he came home to Antwerp and to quiet scenes like this one. It shows a reading lesson. Saint Anne guides her young daughter Mary through the words on a page, the old father Joachim leaning in from the shadows, two small angels drifting overhead with a wreath. There are no thrones or treaties here, just a mother, a child and a book. Rubens came back to this subject more than once in his final Antwerp years, when his religious pictures grew warmer and more homely. This one was made around 1630 as a companion to a painting of Saint Teresa of Avila, the two meant to hang side by side.