Le cardinal-infant Ferdinand d'Autriche à la bataille de Nördlingen

In September 1634 a Spanish and Imperial army crushed the Swedes at Nördlingen in southern Germany, one of the turning points of the Thirty Years' War. Its Habsburg commander was Ferdinand of Austria, a prince made a cardinal as a boy and never ordained a priest, now riding north to govern the Spanish Netherlands as a soldier instead. Rubens, in Antwerp and in his late fifties, was the man his city relied on to design the vast painted arches for Ferdinand's ceremonial entry in 1635. This equestrian portrait belongs to that moment: the young cardinal-general in armour and a red sash, a winged figure of Victory sweeping down out of the smoke to meet him.