The Triumph of Divine Love

In 1625 the Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, sovereign princess of the southern Netherlands, ordered a set of 20 tapestries on the Eucharist for the Descalzas Reales convent in Madrid, and Rubens designed the whole cycle as a run of triumphal processions. This small panel is one of six such models the Prado holds. The weavers never saw it. They worked from cartoons several times larger, copied in turn from pictures like this one. Divine Love rides a chariot, one of the child angels is busy setting light to two knotted serpents, and above them flies the bird that feeds its young on blood drawn from its own breast, a medieval sign for the sacrifice of Christ. The lions pulling the car look worn out by the weight. Rubens spread the paint so thinly that an older inscription still shows through near the top. Infrared reads it whole, Triumphus Caritatis, apparently his own note of the subject this panel was to carry.