Cristo crucificado

Antwerp in 1611 was two years into the Twelve Years' Truce with the Dutch republic, the first real pause in a war that had emptied its churches. Catholic institutions across the city were refilling altars that iconoclasts had stripped in 1566, and Rubens, home from eight years in Italy, had more commissions than he could paint himself. The museum traces this one to Nicolaas Rockox, the burgomaster who was both his friend and his steadiest patron, for the Franciscan church of the Recollects. The canvas stands over two metres high and carries a single figure. It went to France in 1794 and came back in 1815, when it was assigned to the museum rather than to the church it had been painted for.