Cristo in casa di Marta e Maria

Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens had worked as a double act in Antwerp for years, Brueghel supplying the landscape and the flowers, Rubens dropping in the figures. In 1625 an outbreak of cholera killed Brueghel the Elder and three of his children, and his son, then 24 and working in Italy, came home to take over the family workshop. This panel of about 1628 shows that the arrangement simply carried on. The garden and the still life are by the younger Brueghel, the figures of Christ and the two sisters are given to Rubens. The story was almost always painted as an indoor scene, and here it has been moved outdoors. Off in the distance on the right stands the chateau of Mariemont, the summer residence of the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands, by then the widowed Infanta Isabella governing on her own.