La visión de san Huberto

In Antwerp around 1617 the two most celebrated Flemish painters were close friends, and they liked to share a panel. Peter Paul Rubens took the figures, painting the kneeling Saint Hubert, while Jan Brueghel filled in what he did best, the deep forest, the horses and hounds, the stag with a glowing cross caught between its antlers. The division of labour was no secret. A Spanish royal inventory of 1686 spelled it out, crediting the saint to Rubens and the landscape, deer and horses to Brueghel. Hubert was a huntsman who saw that cross mid-chase and left hunting for the church. The small dogs worked into the underbrush are Brueghel quietly showing what he could do.