Le Petit Jugement dernier

By 1619 Rubens ran the busiest painting workshop in Europe, out of Antwerp, turning out grand religious pictures for a Catholic church that was pushing hard against the Protestant Reformation. Images like this were part of that effort: vivid, physical, overwhelming, meant to make the faith felt rather than merely argued. He had already finished a huge Last Judgement two years before, so this one picked up the name the Small Last Judgement, though small is relative, since it still stands nearly two metres tall. Bodies tumble up toward the light and down into the dark in one churning diagonal mass. It hangs today in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, in a room full of Rubens, one of the largest gatherings of his work anywhere.