Theresa of Avila

Teresa of Avila had been dead for 32 years when Rome beatified her in 1614, and this half-length study was probably made around then, to mark the occasion. She was a very recent figure for Rubens's Antwerp. The Carmelite nuns she had reformed in Spain reached the Spanish Netherlands in 1607, led by one of her own companions, Anne of Jesus, under the protection of the Archduchess Isabella in Brussels. The museum reads two sides of Teresa in the picture, the practical organiser who founded convent after convent and the writer who set down her visions, and Rubens gives her a firm, compact face and keeps the colour deliberately sparse, almost ascetic. Look at how unevenly it is finished. Only the head is fully worked up, and the rest of the panel stays close to a sketch, so you can see where he stopped. It belonged to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm before entering the imperial collection.