L'Adoration des mages

In the spring of 1609 the negotiators ending Spain's long war with the Dutch met in Antwerp's town hall, in a room called the Statenkamer, and the city commissioned Rubens to paint something for those walls. He gave them this Adoration: kings from distant lands bringing gifts and bowing before a child, a scene of nations at peace that matched exactly what the room was for. That might have been the end of it. Nearly 20 years later Rubens travelled to Spain on a diplomatic mission and found the painting again in the royal collection. He could not leave it alone. He added strips of canvas to the top and right and reworked almost the whole surface, older now and grander, changing the light and the crowd until much of what you see is the hand of a man going back over his younger self.