Contadini in festa e in danza

Rubens painted this for himself, and late. By the mid-1630s he had spent years as a diplomat crossing Europe for the Spanish crown, been knighted by two kings, then largely withdrawn to a country house outside Antwerp with a young second wife. There he made landscapes and scenes like this village feast, a churning crowd of peasants dancing, drinking, grabbing at each other and being sick under a wide sky. It was a wedding celebration, a kermesse, and he did not tidy up the rougher side of it. He kept the picture, and it was still unsold when he died in 1640. Louis XIV later bought it for the French crown, which is how a private late Rubens ended up in the Louvre.