The Virgin and Child in a Painting surrounded by Fruit and Flowers

Around 1618 to 1621, when this panel was painted in Antwerp, a garland of flowers around a holy figure carried an argument. Reformers in the north had spent two generations attacking the cult of images, and Catholic patrons answered by setting sacred figures inside fruit and blossom. Federico Borromeo, the archbishop of Milan, promoted the form harder than anyone. Then look at what the garland actually encircles. It is a framed picture of the Virgin and Child, shown hanging on a wall, so the flowers close around a painted image. By 1637 the panel was in Madrid, in the collection of the marqués de Leganés, whom Rubens, who painted the figures here, called one of the best judges of art in the world.