The Elevation of the Cross

Rubens had spent eight years in Italy, studying Michelangelo and the ancient marbles in Rome, and this was the first great commission he took on after coming home to Antwerp. You can feel Italy in it. Christ's body is a single diagonal strain, and the muscular men heaving the cross upright look lifted straight from antique sculpture. It was made for the high altar of the church of Saint Walburga, tall enough to be read from the back of a large Gothic nave. The painting travelled later than Rubens ever meant it to. French troops carted it off to Paris in the 1790s, and when it returned after Napoleon's defeat its old church was a ruin, so it was rehung in Antwerp's cathedral, where it still hangs.