La Elevación de la Cruz (panel izquierdo)

Antwerp signed a truce with the Dutch in 1609, after four decades of war, and its churches, stripped in the religious riots of the previous century, were being fitted out again. Rubens had come home from eight years in Italy, and in 1610 the spice merchant Cornelis van der Geest paid for a new high altarpiece at St Walburga's, the church near the harbour. This is its left wing. The Virgin and John the Evangelist stand in shadow under a rock, turned toward the centre panel where the cross is being hauled upright, while the women and children below them show none of that restraint. French troops took the triptych to Paris in 1794. It came back in 1815, and when St Walburga's was demolished the three panels went into the cathedral, where they have hung since 1816.