The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints by Peter Paul Rubens

In 1628 the Augustinian friars of Antwerp were finishing their new church, and they handed the three main altars to the three best painters in the city. Jordaens took one side altar, Van Dyck the other, and Rubens the high altar above them both. This small panel is the plan he showed them, worked up for a canvas five and a half metres tall. Around the throne he set the saints the friars wanted, Augustine in bishop's robes holding a burning heart, Lawrence with the gridiron he was roasted on, and Nicholas of Tolentino, the order's own man. He was still changing his mind even at this size. Scanning at the Gemäldegalerie picked up a putto in this sketch that he later painted out. The finished altarpiece went back on view in Antwerp in 2025, after a restoration that took two years.