Adorazione dei Magi

Rubens painted this in 1634 for a convent of nuns in Louvain, a town in what is now Belgium, and the prioress paid him for it that same year. When convents were closed in the 1780s it was sold, and it drifted through English private collections for well over a century. Then in 1959 a wealthy racehorse owner bought it at auction for a record sum and gave it to King's College in Cambridge. Fitting it into the college's famous chapel meant lowering the floor and stripping out old panelling so the huge canvas would not block the stained glass, which upset a good many people. It has hung behind the altar there since 1968. In 1974 someone got in and scratched three letters into the paint with a coin, damage that was later repaired.