L'Adorazione dei Magi

Rubens painted this altarpiece in the mid-1620s for the high altar of a convent church in Brussels, in a land cut in two by religion. The northern Dutch provinces had broken away as a Protestant republic and stripped their churches bare of images. The southern provinces, where Rubens lived, stayed Catholic and under Spanish rule, and their answer to that plainness was exactly this: colour, gold, movement, and feeling piled on without restraint. An Adoration of the Magi suited the task — three kings and their retinues crowding in to kneel before an ordinary child, every fabric and face given full Rubens weight. He knew the Catholic cause from the inside. Through these same years he also worked quietly as a diplomat for the Spanish crown, carrying messages toward a peace. The nuns kept the picture for 150 years, then sold it in 1777 to the king of France, over enough local protest that a government minister had to authorise letting it leave the country.